


I'll give you my best side, tell you all my best lies

by oneshinyapple



Category: Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Marvel (Comics), Spider-Man (Comicverse), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Body Swap, Identity Porn, Identity Reveal, M/M, Mistaken Identity, Secret Identity, gone wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-14 21:01:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15397359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneshinyapple/pseuds/oneshinyapple
Summary: Peter Parker, who, despite his stupid serious face, had a pretty girl on his arm all the time.  Peter Parker, hotshot photographer with his own published book of photos.  Peter Parker, with the brain that had impressed even Reed.Johnny was in that Peter Parker’s body and all he could think about was how massively unfair it was.  How unfair that Johnny had to live in a universe where Peter Parker was already all that and it wasn’t even enough.  Oh, no.Peter Parker’s goddamn abs justhadto beso much betterthan Johnny’s.+++Just another body swap fic. Johnny doesn't know Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Property damage (which is notquitethe same as hilarity, oops) ensues.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Has references to Spider-Man/Fantastic Four #1 and the entirety of Spider-Man/Human Torch (especially #5) all throughout. Title is from Lorde's _Homemade Dynamite_.
> 
> I re-appropriated and changed the villain a bit from the All-New Wolverine Annual Vol. 1 #1, where Gwen Stacy and Laura Kinney swap bodies. I just needed a tech-based body-swapper. I could have made my own but so long as I'm already re-appropriating things...
> 
> (Note that this takes place before Civil War in a canon-adjacent universe and therefore LONG before Superior Spider-Man, thus Peter has not yet been traumatized by body swaps.)
> 
> Now has a Russian translation. Thank you so much!

The biggest problem with having super fights in the middle of New York City was that there were civilians _everywhere_.

The second biggest problem was that so many of them had the self-preservation instincts of moths at a bonfire party.  And the Baxter Building was one massive screaming bonfire by itself, drawing curious tourists and celebrity stalkers on any normal, boring day – which was why the Fantastic Four were, yet again, desperately trying to steer their latest ill-advised supervillain attacker elsewhere.

The villain was someone new and unfamiliar, though Johnny had heard her refer to herself as “Hornet.”  Johnny judged her immediately, being of the opinion that anyone adopting yet another insect-based moniker at that point was just being lazy and uncreative.  Hornet wasn’t much of a villain, either, and it didn’t take the Four long to deduce that all her suit gave her was slightly enhanced durability and flight. The real threat was the massive ray gun she was carrying.

“It appears to emit some kind of matter displacement beam,” Sue said over the comms, deflecting a blast with a force shield after they’d been chasing the villain for close to twenty minutes.

“A _what_?” Johnny yelled.

“It displaces matter!”

“Well, that’s helpful.”

“Why not jus’ say a teleporter, Susie?” Ben grumbled from the ground, herding civilians as he followed the aerial side of the fight, which was mostly just Johnny hurling fireballs, Sue trailing in the car, and a towering Reed trying to taunt Hornet away from a residential area towards somewhere less populated.

“Because it doesn’t just _teleport_ , Ben,” Reed explained patiently. “It instantly displaces one thing with something else, even if it’s just air, and vice-versa.”

As if to illustrate his point, Hornet rose to aim the beam to pass over Reed’s head and then at a wall. The concrete suddenly sported a hole two meters wide, just as a similarly-shaped chunk of wall materialized and came crashing down toward Reed.

He was saved by another shield courtesy of Sue and Johnny decided he had had enough.

“Okay, I’m done. I just have to destroy that, right?” Johnny asked.

“Johnny, wait!” Sue cried behind him—but it was too late. A tendril of flame had already lashed out from his fingers and was quickly engulfing the weapon.

“What—No, you idiot! Now the beam’s gonna be too unstable for me to use—”

“Good!”

Hornet glared at him and shrieked, as she floated above, “—which _means_ that it can no longer be aimed _or_ controlled!”

“Oh.”

Once again, the universe seemed to think Johnny required practical demonstration. Sue struggled to contain the weapon’s sudden indiscriminate firing and was _almost_ successful.  One beam had slipped out ahead of her force bubble, heading straight for a target: Johnny himself.

It was too wide for him to dodge, and there was no shelter for him to hide behind.  The beam passed right through him and into the old apartment building below.

“Johnny?” Sue called shakily, eyes wide in shock and concern.

“Um. That was weird,” Johnny said faintly, looking down at himself.  It felt like something was digging around inside him, as if trying to shuck his very essence out of his skin.  It didn’t hurt, it was just _strange_ , but maybe it would pass in a minute, maybe it wouldn’t work on humans or on people like him.

But then his flame died and his vision went dark.

The last thing he heard, as he braced for impact, were three voices screaming his name.

 

+++

 

Johnny climbed back into consciousness with a fierce headache and a dry, itchy throat.  His eyes felt glued shut and he couldn’t breathe through his nose.  He was familiar with this feeling.  He hadn’t felt it in a while, but he remembered it. He had a _cold_.

He rolled over to the other side of his bed, rubbed his face into the scratchy linen, and groaned pathetically.  The bed felt unusually hard and lumpy, and was that a _spring_ poking into his back? God the mattress really should be much better quality for the price he’d—

Johnny’s eyes snapped open, dried up and crusted eye gunk making it difficult, and finally realized what he already should have.

This was not his room.  The bed and sheets were all wrong –faded and old.  The battered and stuffed bookcase, the pile of laundry on the floor, and the scattered random items all over the place were things definitely not _his_.  He glanced up at the ceiling: dirty white and peeling plaster in places and _what the hell_ , this was most _definitely_ not even in the Baxter Building.

He closed his eyes briefly, trying to recall what he’d been doing the night before. If he’d just had a one night stand with someone, he hoped they were at least pretty because they had also apparently given him a virus.

The street outside suddenly seemed so loud, full of honking and what sounded like everyone outside shouting, disrupting his concentration. He kept drawing a blank and finally gave up trying, choosing instead to drag himself out of bed and hope his unidentified hook-up was still around.  As soon as his feet hit the floor, however, he found that he felt _wrong_.  He glanced down at himself, at first attributing his wooziness to the cold, but stopped when he noticed his feet.  They peeked out below the ugly brown sweatpants that was the only piece of clothing he wore, slender and graceful.  Completely unlike the ones he was used to seeing at the end of his legs.

What the hell?

The first tingle of alarm went off in the back of his head.  Maybe his vision was warped by the cold.  He really should do something about that.  He furrowed his brow and called on his flames, determined to boil the infliction out of his blood.

Nothing happened.

The tingle was now a honking foghorn echoing inside his brain.

_Supervillain. Some supervillain kidnapped me and did something funny._

Whoever it was had to be the dumbest supervillain alive, fortunately for him, since they hadn’t even bothered restraining him.

Johnny began to tiptoe to the door, hoping the idiot was out there and ready (not actually _ready_ ) to be punched in the face.  He was stopped short by a movement out of the corner of his eye and he whirled to face it, fists up to attack, and froze.

It wasn’t a person as he had initially thought.  Or rather, not an _actual_ person, just a reflection of one.  A mirror.  _His_ reflection.  The pose was the same, the stupefied expression an equivalent of the one he was sure he was wearing. But the face and the body were not his at all.  The face was familiar, something about it tickling the back of his mind, but he didn’t want to focus on that just yet. His mind cycled through possibilities.  A window with a mimic behind it? No, the reflection was wiggling its fingers the same way he was at exactly the same time.  Johnny stepped forward and the figure did the same.  Johnny pinched his cheek and so did the image, no delay whatsoever.

_Fuuuuuuuck._

_I’m in someone else’s body._

_Someone with really,_ really _nice abs,_ he thought, skimming his fingers across his flat stomach.  This was already much better than the first time this ever happened.  Back then, he’d swapped with Victor, and hadn’t _that_ been a disaster.

He stepped closer and inspected the face more closely, running through a mental catalog of nice-looking hazel-eyed brunets.  His thoughts of the last time this happened helped him along.  Spider-Man.  ESU.  A mouthy college kid.  Recognition finally came and it hit him like a slap.  He _knew_ that face.  He had only seen it a few times over the years and it was different from what he remembered (slightly older, less thin, _better_ – even with his eyes puffy and nose red from the cold), but he knew it.  It was the face of one Peter Parker.

Peter Parker, who, despite his stupid serious face, had a pretty girl on his arm all the time.  Peter Parker, hotshot photographer with his own published book of photos.  Peter Parker, with the brain that had impressed even Reed.

Johnny was in _that_ Peter Parker’s body and all he could think about was how massively unfair it was.  How unfair that Johnny had to live in a universe where Peter Parker was already _all that_ and it wasn’t even enough.  Oh, no. 

Peter Parker’s goddamn abs just _had_ to be _so much better_ than Johnny’s.

  

+++

 

First things first, Johnny had to contact Reed or get to the Baxter Building.  He wasn’t sure if Peter was in his body or if Johnny Storm was now just an empty meat suit, and truthfully the first possibility was more worrying than the second, at least for the general public.  He had no idea how Peter would react to suddenly having Johnny’s powers and if he would be able to keep from inadvertently hurting anyone with them.  Reed would help him figure out what to do next, if he couldn’t fix him right away.

He glanced around the room, looking for a phone, and found two cell phones on the night stand, half-buried under a pile of used tissues that Johnny desperately wanted burn.  One of them was a cracked and battered smart phone – if it could even count as that.  It had a passcode lock and Johnny made a face, setting it aside.  The other one was an ancient black flip phone, badly scuffed, scratched, and chipped in many places.  No lock code, default image still the wallpaper, keys way too clicky.  _A burner phone?_

Johnny was just about to dial home when loud noises coming from the wide bedroom window made him jump—the sound of rattling metal and a heavy thud, followed by someone pounding on the glass.

Johnny looked up and froze, save for his jaw slowly going slack.  Johnny was staring at his actual body, dressed in his uniform and wearing the same shocked expression.

The figure on the fire escape furrowed their brow.  “Let me in,” they said, voice strained, and _wow_ , Johnny’s voice sounded higher outside of his head.  They pounded the glass again.  “Let me in before I melt this glass down and accidentally set my own damn apartment on fire.”

“Parker?” Johnny asked, jumping to the window and carefully pulling up the sash.  “That’s…that’s you in there, right?”

Peter ducked in, eyes cold and unimpressed, wearing Johnny’s face.  “What the hell did you do to me, Storm?”

“Me? What makes you think this is _my_ fault?”

“Well, it’s not mine!” Peter hissed, leaning forward. “I was in bed all day yesterday, _sick_ , and when I woke up today, I’m in _this_.” He gestured at Johnny’s body as if it somehow offended him, which offended Johnny.

“What’s wrong with my body?” Johnny protested. “It’s the most attractive you’ve probably ever been.”

“I just spent two hours flying over New York learning how not to set _everything_ on fire.  I singed your sheets waking up!”

“Wait, you were at the Baxter Building?  Why didn’t you _tell Reed_?”

Peter made a small disgusted noise. “They left a note.  Some emergency in the microverse or something and since you— I— _this body_ apparently got hurt yesterday, they decided to just let it rest.”

Johnny tried not to panic any more than he already was.  “Did—Did they say when they’re getting back?”

“The note said they expect to be back by lunch.”

“Oh,” Johnny said, relieved.  “Good, good.”

“No, it’s _not_ ,” Peter said between his teeth, and Johnny saw his eyes literally begin to blaze at the same time a sliver of pain sliced into the back of his head.

 _Oh, no_.  “Parker… Peter, calm down, okay?”

He blinked, clearly noticing how Johnny leaned away from him, and struggled to control his temper.  “Okay.  Okay, I’m _calm_.”

Johnny’s headache subsided and he breathed a sigh of relief.  “We need to get to the Baxter Building.  There’s—there’s stuff in there that can help keep… _you_ under control, if—if—”

“Yeah, I get it.  In case I blow up,” Peter interrupted dryly and Johnny wondered why he wasn’t reacting the way Johnny was expecting him to.  He seemed pissed at the _inconvenience_ , sure, but he didn’t seem too scared or worried or even _excited_ about suddenly having weird, highly dangerous powers.  He also didn’t seem inclined to abuse them, though Johnny wasn’t sure if he was just in so much shock.  “I’ll meet you there.”

Johnny frowned. “What?  Meet me?  No, come on, dude.  Just fly me over.”

“Johnny,” Peter said slowly. “I managed to fly over here but I don’t know if I have the same kind of handle you got on this.  I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Oh. That’s…that’s a good point.”

“Besides, I don’t want to _carry_ you all the way over.”

“Your skinny ass probably doesn’t even weigh anything,” Johnny scowled.  “But fine.  Where’s your wallet?  I need cab fare.”

“Take the subway.”

“I’m not getting on the _subway_.”

Peter’s jaw twitched.

“Look, I’ll pay you back when we get there!  And you should probably just ride with me so I can keep an eye on you.”

“Would that actually be better?  What if I— If I’m up there, I won’t hurt anybody.” _Now,_ he looked worried, which Johnny found interesting.

“Except maybe yourself.”

Peter shrugged. “Yeah, but at least it’ll just be me.”

Johnny blinked at him.  “Wow. You have superpowers for a couple of hours and you’ve already got the whole self-sacrificing bullshit down.  And before you say anything, yeah, I know what that sounds like coming from me.”

Peter sighed and went to his closet, grabbing a random shirt and jeans.  “Put some clothes on,” he told Johnny, shoving them in his arms.

Johnny made a face at the truly unfortunate orange shirt.  “This is terrible, Parker.  You can’t seriously expect me to wear this.” He tossed it over his shoulder and marched to the closet.

“We don’t have time for this, Torch!”

“We always have time to look _nice_ ,” he tossed over his shoulder as he reached for the closet door and gave it a gentle tug, intending to pull it open.

He didn’t expect the entire door to come off, ripped right out of its hinges.  “What. The. Hell.”

“Johnny!”

Johnny turned around, his lower jaw jutting out defensively. “Your place is falling apart!  That was _not_ my fault.”

Peter’s expression was one Johnny was sure his face had never made before, muscles in his jaw and cheeks shifting as he opened his mouth, clenched his teeth, opened his mouth again, and finally let out a groan.  “Just get changed.  We’ll take a cab together.”

 

+++

 

By the time Johnny had found the least hideous thing in Peter’s wardrobe (a plain white t-shirt that clung to those sinfully sculpted abs) and a passable green jacket, Peter had already pulled on some plain clothes over his uniform and was stuffing some things, including his two cell phones, into a small backpack.

“Parker, Johnny Storm can’t go out there in that shirt,” Johnny sighed, realizing he’d just put on the orange one that Johnny had rejected.

Peter gave him a steady glare as he shoved a Mets cap onto his head and cheap sunglasses over his eyes.  “No one’s even going to notice,” he insisted, in the most obvious disguise ever conceived.

“Whatever,” Johnny muttered, giving up and heading out of the bedroom.

He was reaching for the front door when Peter surged forward, knocking his arm out of the way, and opened the door himself.  Johnny gave him an odd look but didn’t comment.  It was the same deal for the apartment entrance and the cab door.

Johnny looked at him, half in exasperation and half in puzzlement, holding the door to the taxi open.  “Gee, Pete. Didn’t know you were such a gentleman.”

It was interesting to watch his own face turn a light pink, though Johnny had no idea why Peter would look so sheepish or embarrassed.  He got in the cab, followed by Peter, and told the driver where to go.

The ride, for the first few minutes, was quiet. Johnny looked at Peter (himself) out of the corner of his eye.  The poor dude looked constipated.  Johnny hoped his body never looked like that when he was actually in it.

“Stop staring at me,” Peter hissed.

“I can see your pores,” Johnny whispered, half amazed and half horrified.  “I don’t have _pores_.  Your eyesight is insane, dude.”

“Everyone has pores, Torch,” he answered irritably. “Only wax figures and androids don’t.”

“I don’t get it…didn’t you use to have glasses?”

“Laser. Does wonders.”

“This is _so_ weird.  It feels weird to look at myself without me in it. I’ve been through this before but I never really had to…spend time with _me_.I’m surprised _you’re_ not freaking out more.”

“I _am_ freaking out.”

“Yeah, but…not as much as I’d have expected?”

Peter snorted.  “Believe me, matchstick. I’ve been through weirder, too.”  He sighed and leaned his head back.  “And you told me to calm down so I’m _trying_ , okay?”

“Yeah, alright, but you’re going to give my face wrinkles if you don’t quit frowning like that,” Johnny said.

“I can’t help it, okay? I’m missing work. _Again._ And I have somewhere I really need to be this afternoon.  And on top of those, I don’t know how you do this. I…kind of melted a window when I left your room, before I figured out how to stop, y’know, being on fire.”

Johnny tried not to think of what other damage he might have caused to his bedroom and magnanimously waved a hand.  “Hey.  It’s okay.  I made a lot of mistakes when I was new, too, but everything worked out. Just don’t try to do anything big like fight Galactus in my body and we’ll be fine.  And I’m sure Reed can sort this thing out quickly.  We’ll be back to our normal, boring lives.” He paused. “Well, _you’ll_ be back to your normal boring life.  My life’s all fun and glamorous.”

“Your life is probably what got us into this mess.”

He was right, but Johnny didn’t want to admit it.  Yesterday’s battle had started coming back to him in bits and pieces, and he was certain that it had been Hornet’s stupid malfunctioning _matter-displacing_ gun that had done it.

“So, how _is_ it going?” Johnny asked, trying to sound off-hand.

“What?”

“Your life.  Taking Spidey pictures.”

Peter glanced at the driver, who was dutifully ignoring their whispered conversation.  “Okay… I guess?” he said guardedly.  “Why?”

Johnny shrugged, studying his nails. They were trimmed to just above the bleeding point and completely atrocious.  Peter probably never had a manicure in his life. “I haven’t seen him out and about much these past few days.  But if you’re still taking his pictures, then I guess he must be okay.”

There was a brief silence and then Peter, sounding faintly amused, asked, “Are you…worried about Spider-Man?”

“No,” Johnny said, entirely too quickly. “Just, you know. He disappears sometimes and then his villains go nuts and it’s just a pain in the ass dealing with what feels like an insane zoo loose in New York.”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Peter said shortly, looking out the window.  “Probably just busy.”

“With what?  The guy fights crime practically twenty-four-seven because he’s crazy.  Does he even have a hobby that isn’t punching people?”

“Do you say such nice things about all your friends behind their backs?” Peter asked.

“Hey, I like him, but it’s unhealthy. So?”

“So, what?”

“Does he have a hobby?” Johnny pressed, worrying at his thumbnail. “Do you guys like…hang out?  Is he on a break?  Because he probably really needs one, let’s be real—”

Peter gave him a funny look.  “You’re worried about _Spider-Man_.”

“What?  We do team-ups! We talk sometimes! It's not that weird,” Johnny said irritably, wishing he hadn’t said anything.  His family was always poking fun at him for talking about Spidey so much. Which, come on, he didn’t do it _that_ often, only when the Bugle’s latest sensational and mostly fictitious headline had to do with him.  But he was talking to Peter Parker, arguably the one guy in all of New York most obsessed with Spider-Man, going by how he always seemed to know where to find the webslinger.  Johnny thought Peter should have had no room to judge.

The cab finally rolled to a stop outside the Baxter Building and Peter hastily shoved money at the driver.  He got out first, once again holding the door open, and shut it once Johnny was out.

“That’s getting really suspicious, you know,” Johnny said.

“You have a bad track record with doors.”

“It was _one_ door. That’s hardly a _track record_. And I’m pretty sure it was your closet’s fault,” Johnny said, rolling his eyes.

Fortunately, most doors in the Baxter Building were fully automatic. 

Peter seemed relieved. 

Johnny couldn’t believe just how strange the guy was turning out to be.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “MJ says you’re the worst human being,” he said in a tone that perfectly conveyed his agreement. “You need to go to this thing.”
> 
> “Well, I can’t go like _this_! But…well…” Peter was giving him puppy dog eyes, using his own face as a weapon against him, the _jerk_.
> 
> Johnny could see where this was going and heaved a sigh. “You owe me big time, Parker.”

Johnny’s family returned at half past ten, much earlier than promised.  Which was just as well, because Johnny was going out of his mind with boredom, especially since Parker had stopped speaking to him in favor of texting non-stop on his phones.  There was a lot of fussing at first when they saw Johnny (actually Peter) up, followed by confusion when they saw Peter (actually Johnny) there for no apparent reason.  Johnny explained what had happened as best he could, including the fight the day before for Peter’s benefit since the guy still seemed lost. This was followed by an hour in the lab doing tests and making sure nothing else was wrong and ended with Johnny pleading with Reed to fix them as soon as possible. 

“If he hasn’t burned the building down by now, then he probably won’t any time soon,” Reed shrugged when Johnny gave him what he thought was a valid reason to put working on fixing them at the top of their to-do list.  “Right now we have to deal with an interstellar plague that might spell the end of two inhabited planets that _specifically_ asked for our help.”

“Wait, wait. You’d really trust _my_ powers with _him_?” Johnny asked incredulously, pointing across the living room.

“Standing right here,” Peter said in injured tone, his sole contribution to the conversation so far.  “But I agree.  I’d like to be back in my own body, please.  For everyone’s safety, really.”

Sue exchanged a look with Reed.  “We understand, and we’re going to work on it.  It just might take time.”

“Define taking time,” Johnny said, crossing his arms.

“A couple of days.” Reed said.  “The disease is a real concern that may even reach us here, given how many visitors our planet gets.  I’m sorry, Johnny. Peter.”

“Maybe you can call in help,” Johnny suggested desperately.  “Like Hank McCoy or—”

“Already on it, as are a lot of other people.”

“Can _I_ do anything?” Peter asked, actually trying to be useful at last.

Reed looked at him thoughtfully.  “We can keep you in the loop.  Fresh eyes can be very helpful.  But crowding any more people around the lab may be more hindrance than help at this point.”

Johnny was surprised that Peter let that go without protest.  But then Reed _was_ his hero and maybe he was only a snarky dick to Johnny.

“I know one other way you can help,” Sue said.  “Come on, Johnny.  Help me out with lunch.  You, too, Peter.”

“I’ll need to talk to Peter a bit more, dear,” Reed said absently with a meaningful glance at the guy.  There was something weird in that look but Johnny couldn’t figure it out.

“You want us to wait—”

“No, Johnny.  It’s just…science stuff,” Reed said.  “I’m taking him up on his offer but it would probably bore you.”

Johnny’s eyebrows leapt up as Ben walked past, glad to have an excuse to leave and muttering about sandwiches. It wasn’t as if Reed ever cared if Johnny was interested or not – he just automatically talked anyone’s ear off about the topic.  Clearly, whatever they were going to discuss was some other private matter, but what Reed could possibly have to talk to Peter about, Johnny had no idea.

Sue was tugging insistently on his arm, however, and Johnny, finding himself with no reason to stay (and with concern for what would be lunch if Sue was left to her own devices), was forced to follow out the door. 

Twenty minutes later found Johnny glancing at the entrance to the living area for the nth time, not hearing a word Sue was saying, while absently assembling sandwiches. What the hell was taking Parker so long? What could he and Reed possibly be talking about?

“…and then I was thinking you could cut back on spending on your end by just wearing suits from last season for this next one—”

“Whaaaaat?” Johnny squawked, attention snapping back to the conversation he was supposed to be part of.

Sue smirked. “Oh, so you heard _that_ part, huh?”

“I was thinking,” Johnny said loftily. “Very deep thoughts. Super deep.”

“Uh-huh. Look, it’s fine, little brother.  I understand why you’re preoccupied.  Speaking of which, can you go get Reed and Peter from the lab?  It’s time to eat.”

Johnny went to do as she asked, now lost in thought as to how he (and Peter, he supposed) were supposed to pass the next two days.  The pair of them had never gotten along particularly well — today was the most civilized they had ever managed to be to each other, and he wasn’t optimistic that it would last.

“…think this schematic you and I just reverse-engineered is accurate for how the ray gun is supposed to be,” Reed was saying from around a dividing wall as Johnny slipped into the lab unnoticed. “It was fortunate we managed to salvage what was left of the parts after the fight.  Assembly should be fairly straightforward but optimization might take time since we need to figure out just how it went _wrong_ instead of getting it to work _right_.”

“I can work on that now if you like…?” Peter’s voice asked eagerly, no doubt as anxious to get back in his own body as Johnny was.

“No, it’s alright. I can automate the assembly process and the rest will have to wait while I use the lab for our other problem… But there’s something else you need to do.” Reed sounded really serious and Johnny hesitated, stopping in his tracks just around the corner.

“Anything.”

“Does Johnny know?”

Johnny stopped breathing.  Does Johnny know?  Does Johnny know _what_?  _Why are they talking about me all of a sudden?_

“…No, Reed.  He’s not—There’s a very short list and he’s not on it.”

Johnny frowned at the thought of some kind of exclusive list that didn’t have him but had _Parker_.

“Peter, I know you have your reasons, but maybe it’s necessary for you to trust Johnny with this information, given the situation.”

“I don’t know.  He kinda hates me.”

Johnny almost snorted.  That was true—

“I think you know that Johnny’s feelings for you are a lot more complicated than that,” Reed said, and this time he almost sounded like he wanted to laugh.

Johnny, meanwhile, wanted to scream. _What?_ What? _Why the hell would he think I have complicated feelings for Parker?  I barely know him, and the little I know annoys me!_   He jumped out of his hiding place, annoyed at being talked about as if either of them knew anything about what was going on inside his head, but also guilty for eavesdropping.  “If you two are done with the science talk, lunch is ready,” Johnny said, perhaps a bit more sharply than he’d intended.

Peter jumped but Reed looked calm.

“I’ll be right upstairs, Johnny,” Reed promised, turning to a crude diagram drawn on a sheet of paper.  “Go on ahead, Peter.”

Peter followed Johnny out of the room reluctantly, falling into a pensive silence that Johnny decided he hated far more than Peter being an insulting jerk.

“Anything you want to say to me, Parker?” he asked, eyes fixed on the elevator door as they ascended.

“No…Should there be?” Peter said carefully.

“You tell me,” Johnny answered, voice clipped. 

Peter cocked his head, faking innocence and confusion.

Johnny ground his teeth together.  He _knew_.  Peter knew Johnny heard them and he _still_ wouldn’t say anything.

_“Maybe it’s necessary for you to trust Johnny with this information.”_

But Peter didn’t trust him.  Why should he?  Whatever the secret was, Johnny wasn’t entitled to it.  It’s not like they were friends. _Why does Reed get to know what I don’t?_ Johnny wondered grumpily, feeling inexplicably slighted.  That was the real issue, he decided.  Reed and Peter weren’t friends, either.  Reed had _fired_ him for divulging confidential information to _Spider-Man_ , for heaven’s sake.

“Where’s Reed?” Sue asked when the two of them walked into the dining room sans one malleable genius. “Did he say he was going to be ‘right upstairs’ and go straight back to work again?”

Both Peter and Johnny managed to look guilty.

“Honestly, you should know better,” she told her brother with a huff as she breezed past him into the elevator, possibly about to glare Reed into submission.

Fifteen minutes later, the sandwiches were soggy and even colder than they’re supposed to be but Reed and Sue still had not joined them.  Ben had gotten impatient and had taken three sandwiches with him to his room, leaving Johnny and Peter alone at the table.

“I can’t believe they just did this to us,” Johnny mumbled, steeling himself for an awkward meal.

Peter wasn’t even listening.  He was texting furiously again, that serious furrow wrinkling his brow once more, to Johnny’s dismay.

Johnny was just about to comment on this when the phone in Peter’s hand started ringing.

“Shit,” Johnny distinctly heard him swear. “Shit, shit, _shit_.”

“Wow, don’t let Franklin hear that.”

Peter looked up at him, eyes wild.  “MJ is calling!  I told her _not_ to this morning, so _of course_ now she is!”

“Then don’t answer?”

“But—it’s _MJ_!” he cried as if Johnny was supposed to know who that was.

Johnny rolled his eyes and snatched the phone out of his hands, answering the call before Peter could say or do anything.  “Hi, ‘MJ.’  I’m sorry but Parker can’t come to the phone right now.”

Peter made a strangled groan and hit his head on the table repeatedly.

"Nice try, Tiger,” MJ said on the other end of the line.  Turned out MJ was a woman and Johnny hoped she looked as good as she sounded because _wow_.  She somehow sounded sweet and sultry at the same time.

And then it hit Johnny that MJ wasn’t going to believe him, naturally, because he _was_ , technically, Peter.  Or, at least, he _sounded_ like Peter. 

“Um,” Johnny began without going anywhere.

There was a loud, drawn-out sigh on the other end.  “Did you forget?”

Johnny looked at Peter for assistance, who at least had recovered enough to be staring at him.  Johnny tugged him closer by his sleeve but misjudged either his own strength or how relaxed Peter was in his body, yanking the latter right out of his seat and sending him crashing into Johnny instead.

“Ow!” Johnny moaned, landing on the floor. Peter missed him narrowly and faceplanted onto the carpet.

“Johnny, what the hell—”

“Peter?” MJ’s voice, tinny and shrill, drifted out through the phone now lying between them on the floor.  “What’s going on?  Are you _fighting_ someone right now?”

“No!” Peter shouted hastily, scrambling closer.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

Peter looked frustrated but pushed the phone closer to Johnny, who decided he didn’t _really_ need to get up, the floor was perfectly nice, thank you.  “Answer her,” he mouthed urgently.

“It’s a, um, a…friend?” Johnny replied, ignoring Peter rolling his eyes.  The other man settled on his back next to Johnny, almost distractingly close, so that he could hear some of MJ’s side, too.  “Anyway, did you say something?”

“I asked you if you forgot and I’m going to guess you probably did,” she said with the long-suffering tone of someone who has been through this a hundred times.

“I…forgot,” Johnny said, watching as Peter’s eyes slowly grew wide.  “I’m sorry?”

“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to, Peter. You’re already fifteen minutes late and the food’s probably cold, but you can still make it to Aunt May’s and not _completely_ break her heart if you hurry.”

Johnny winced. “Yeah…do you think maybe she’ll let me get out of it with a rain check?”  Peter was mouthing something that looked a lot like the word “No,” his eyes enormous. Johnny guessed he must want to cancel and forged on.  “It’s just that I’m—”

“You already missed her actual birthday!  This _is_ the rain check!”

“It’s just that I am really… _really_ sick—”

Peter face-palmed and made wringing motions with his hands.  He looked mad at Johnny for some reason.

“What?” Johnny whispered back, scowling.  “I don’t know what you want!”

“Yesterday, you sounded like a dying cow, but you seem perfectly normal now.  And obviously you’re not too sick to have company,” MJ’s voice said pointedly from the phone. She sighed and her voice took on a more serious tone. “Listen, Peter, you can do this sort of thing to me because I _know_ and my expectations are low, but are you seriously going to cancel on May at the _last minute_?  Because if you are, I’m going to ask that you review your entire life to find out just when, _exactly_ , you became the _worst_ human being.”

“Just a second, MJ,” Johnny said politely then pulled the phone away, muffling the mic with his hand.

Peter raised his eyebrows.

“MJ says you’re the worst human being,” he said in a tone that perfectly conveyed his agreement. “You need to go to this thing.”

“Well, I can’t go like _this_!  But…well…” Peter was giving him puppy dog eyes, using his own face as a weapon against him, the _jerk_.

Johnny could see where this was going and heaved a sigh.  “You owe me big time, Parker.”  He put the phone back up to his ear.  “I’ll talk to you later, MJ. I have a date with Aunt May.”

 

+++

 

The cab rolled to a stop in front of a small house in Forest Hills (because of course Parker was from _Queens_ ) and Johnny did a double-take at the sight of a stunning redhead standing by the fence in the yard next-door.

“Parker…Parker! Is that…is that _Mary Jane Watson_?”

Peter looked over and groaned, briefly burying his face in his hands.  “Oh, God.  Why is she visiting Aunt Anna _now_?”

Johnny blinked at him. “You know Mary Jane Watson?  Supermodel-slash-actress, all-around perfect human being _Mary Jane Watson_?”

“I just call her MJ for short,” Peter said, sarcasm finally kicking into gear.

“ _That’s_ MJ?!” Johnny hissed, climbing out of the backseat after Peter.  “Your _girlfriend_ is Mary Jane Watson?”

Peter winced as Johnny’s voice climbed alarmingly high.  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Oh,” Johnny laughed, thinking that maybe the universe was fair, after all.  “Of course she isn’t.  She would never—”

“She’s my ex.”

“This is why I hate you, Parker.”

Mary Jane stood with her hands on her hips, her mouth a thin line as they approached.  “I can’t believe you, Peter! You’re now nearly an hour late _and_ you brought some guy along! No offense—” She stopped abruptly, blinking at Peter-in-Johnny and Johnny felt a twinge of satisfaction as her jaw dropped open.  “Johnny Storm,” she said faintly.

“Hi,” Peter waved, and Johnny hoped it was the last time his body would ever be _that_ awkward because it looked _painful_.

Her eyes narrowed suddenly, her expression growing sharp.  “Okay, what’s going on?  Are we on the verge of some kind of apocalypse?”

Johnny eyed Peter. “Nah. We’re not really getting along _yet_ ,” he joked.

Mary Jane’s eyes darted between them, her expression wary. “That’s not how I meant it, Peter. Why are you hanging out with a member of the Fantastic Four?”

Peter’s hand suddenly clamped down hard on Johnny’s arm.  “You know what, I’ll explain it to you later, Mary Jane.  I promise.  But right now we need to get _Pete_ in there.  Aunt May’s waited long enough, don’t you think?”

Mary Jane’s eyebrows shot up at the familiar “Aunt May” and Johnny just knew Peter was mentally kicking himself for the slip-up. “Sure thing, Johnny.  Maybe I’ll get a more straightforward answer out of you than the ones I usually get.”

“Don’t hold your breath, sweetheart,” Johnny snorted as Peter gave him an extra-hard yank in the direction of his house.  “I can see why she broke up with you, Parker,” he muttered so only Peter could hear.

“Shut up, Storm.”

Johnny suddenly planted his feet on the ground and refused to budge.  “Are you going to tell her?”

Peter hesitated.  “I might need to. Later.”

“What about Aunt May?  She’s your family.  She should know, right?”

His eyes turned to steel. “No. Absolutely _not_. Any reference to anything strange and not _normal_ is not allowed around Aunt May, alright?”

“Why not?”

“Look, she worries enough about me out there on my own.  If she finds out that this sort of thing can happen any time, I’ll never hear the end of it.  This problem will last two days, tops.  It’s not worth it.  Just…Just pretend you can act for the next hour or so.”

“Hey!” Johnny protested.

Peter ignored that and drew in a breath, standing on the front stoop. “Hey. I know you hate me, but do me a favor, Torch.”

Johnny looked at him, surprised by the earnest note in his voice.  “What kind of favor?”

“Give her a hug for me, okay?  I can’t— She doesn’t know Johnny Storm but you’re her nephew right now, and… Could you?”

Johnny bit back a smile. Okay. So maybe there was a decent guy lurking somewhere underneath Peter’s rude exterior after all.  “Yeah, but only if you promise to give her one yourself later.  She wouldn’t mind, after spending time with you a while.  People always end up loving Johnny Storm.”

“But I’m _not_ Johnny Storm,” Peter pointed out.

Johnny grinned at him.  “No.  You’re her _nephew_.  I’m sure on some subconscious level she’ll recognize that.  And yeah, now you’re her nephew in a Johnny Storm package, which is irresistible, I’ll have you know.”

Peter groaned and rolled his eyes, though Johnny could swear the corners of his mouth twitched, as if to suppress a smile.

Johnny nudged him in the side.  “Come on.  Open the door.  It’s nearly two in the afternoon and we _still_ haven’t had lunch.  I could eat an entire cow.”

“Oh, I hope you’re ready to do just that,” Peter muttered under his breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously, this is mostly not canon compliant but, in my head, Reed found out Spider-Man's secret identity the same way Reed found out in 616, when Reed, Peter, Luke Cage, and Doctor Strange met Matt Murdock in a park to stage an intervention after Matt declared himself Kingpin. (Daredevil Vol. 2 #56) I love it because DD got pissed at Peter for exposing himself as Spidey but Peter was like "nbd bc u gone crazy bro". Verbatim. (Not really.)
> 
> Also, this chapter and the next were supposed to be just one chapter but Peter and Johnny won't shut up. My mistake for not gagging them instead.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What’s wrong with my fashion sense?”
> 
> “You don’t have one,” Johnny said bluntly.
> 
> “Johnny, I’ve seen the things you wear.”
> 
> “It’s called _haute couture_ , you uncultured swine.”

When Johnny had called ahead to ask May if he could bring a friend (well, more like _tell_ May he was bringing a friend because it wasn’t like he could show up without Peter), he was pretty sure he’d mentioned he was bringing only _one_ friend.  Not…an entire basketball team, because he was certain that was how many people it would take to demolish the enormous pile of food in the kitchen.

“Did—Did you whip up extra food just now?” Johnny asked, awed.

“Don’t be silly,” May said. “Not even I could do something like that.  You’ll just have to cut back a little, dear,” she added, patting him on the cheek.

Johnny looked at Peter then down at his current body’s lean build. ( _Perfect abs,_ Johnny reminded himself.  _How did he get these perfect abs?_ )

“It’s a _joke_ ,” Peter hissed in his ear.  “She’s joking.  But she always makes extra for me to take back to my apartment.”

“You boys just sit here and let me finish reheating the mushroom soup, alright?”

Peter practically tripped over himself to assist her.  “Let me help you, Mrs. Parker—”

“No, no,” May insisted, pushing him back down into his chair at the dining table.  “Keep my nephew company. This won’t take long.”

Johnny waited until she had move out of earshot before leaning in. “Please tell me you at least got a present for that lovely woman or I swear to God, Parker—”

“I gave it to her last week,” Peter said quickly. “Just in case something came up and I couldn’t—you know.”

“So you _do_ stand people up a lot, huh?  What could be more important than your friends and family?”

Peter at least had the grace to look ashamed. “It’s not by choice.  Things just…keep happening around me.” He gestured between the two of them.  “For example.”

Oh. Johnny had to give him that. “What did you get her?”

“A scarf.”

Johnny grimaced.

“What?  What’s wrong with scarves?” Peter demanded.

“Nothing in itself. Just. You know. Your fashion sense.”

“What’s wrong with my fashion sense?”

“You don’t have one,” Johnny said bluntly.

“Johnny, I’ve seen the things you wear.”

“It’s called _haute couture_ , you uncultured swine.”

“Anyway, I got MJ to help me pick one out.”

“Oh. That’s good.  At least you got enough taste to recognize _better_ taste.”

Peter rolled his eyes just as Aunt May came back with a tureen full of soup, ladle tucked by the handle under her elbow.

“I hope you two are hungry.”

“Starving,” Peter promised as Johnny’s stomach rumbled audibly.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Sweetie, I’m fluent in the language your stomach speaks by now.  Dig in.”

Those two words were all it took to get Johnny to inhale a bowl of soup, a plate of spaghetti and meatballs, potato salad, and half a steak. Peter was just the same, he saw. Being made of flames was hell on the metabolism, he knew, but he was amazed by just how much Peter’s real body could put away while still wanting more.

“Slow down, you don’t want to make yourself sick,” May said, actually sounding concerned.

“It’s been a _long_ morning, Au— Mrs. Parker,” Peter said, catching himself at the last second. “We forgot all about breakfast.”

May looked even more worried. “I always remind you not to skip meals, Peter. You’re too skinny.”

May clearly had never seen Peter’s abs. Or his arms. And now that Johnny was thinking about it, the guy was often in baggy or ill-fitting clothes that hid that frustratingly amazing physique. The t-shirt Johnny had on was the only thing in his closet that fit and was threadbare enough to seem like it had been in there since high school.  He wondered what Peter’s workout regimen was and made a mental note to ask.

An elbow suddenly dug into his side and Johnny turned to Peter with an annoyed frown.

He responded by jerking his head ever so slightly in his aunt’s direction.

May was staring at him as if waiting for a response.

“I guess we were…distracted. I’ll be sure not to forget again, Aunt May,” Johnny said, pasting on what he hoped to be a winsome smile on Peter’s face. Johnny didn’t think he’d ever seen him smile in his own face. For all he knew, he was showing too much teeth.

Suddenly, inexplicably, Johnny found himself wanting to know what a smile on Peter’s face would look like.  What _Peter’s_ smile would look like. Not what Johnny would look like doing it for him.

May raised her eyebrows but said nothing for a while, just gazed thoughtfully at the two of them in a way that sent warning tingles up and down Johnny’s spine.

Peter was gulping down half a glass of iced tea when May finally spoke. Johnny somehow saw something coming and had nothing in his mouth. Which was for the best, because May asking them, casually, “So, how long have you two been dating?” would have made him choke on a meatball.

Peter wasn’t so fortunate. Iced tea up your nose burned, Johnny knew that from experience. “We—He and I—We’re not—”

“Calm down, Johnny,” Johnny said, thumping him on the back as he sputtered and struggled. “We’re not dating, Aunt May.”

Huh. That was supposed to sound more convincing, being true and all.

May blinked but then what looked like understanding dawned on her face, except Johnny was sure she didn’t really understand as well as she thought she did. “Oh. Well, if it’s just a casual thing or you don’t want to label it, that’s fine—”

Peter’s aunt was hip and totally cool with her nephew having a fuck buddy, apparently. Johnny was impressed, even if she had it all wrong.

“We’re not…we’re not _anything_ , we’re— Aw geez,” Peter groaned, having regained control of himself and finally noticing he’d spilled his drink on both his vile shirt and the table.  Johnny’s first act the moment he returned to being the Human Torch would be to burn that shirt. Then he’d have to figure out a way to burn the rest of Peter’s shirts. And if that meant Peter would just have to walk around shirtless for a while, he’d be doing the world a favor.

“Whatever you say, dear,” May said. “I’ll go get some paper towels to clean up that spill.”

Peter turned to Johnny so fast as soon as she was out of earshot, Johnny’s surprised he didn’t give himself whiplash. “We were _distracted_ , really?” he whispered, his tone a perfect mockery of Johnny’s. “What were you thinking?”

Johnny huffed and crossed his arms indignantly. “You should be flattered she thinks I would find you hot enough to bang.”

Peter made a strangled sound.

Johnny stared at him, eyes widening as a slow flush crept down Peter’s cheeks to his neck. “Dude, are you _picturing_ it?”

“I am not!” Peter shouted, forgetting himself just as May walked back in with a box of paper towels.

"Johnny Storm,” May said sharply, an intro to a reprimand Johnny was accustomed to hearing in his sister's voice. “When we are inside, we use our indoor voices!”

“Sorry, Aunt— Mrs. Parker.”

Johnny snickered but May turned her sharp gaze on him, making him quickly swallow back his laugh.  Something in that look told him that she knew perfectly well it was her nephew’s fault the Human Torch was shouting in the first place.

“You can call me Aunt May, dear,” she said, expression softening. “But try not to shout again.”

Peter nodded as he finished mopping up the mess on the table.

“Your shirt is soaked through,” May observed. “Peter still has some clothes left up in his room. They’re old but at least they’re dry.”

“Yeah, I’ll…I’ll go grab a shirt,” Peter mumbled, getting up.

May stared at Johnny expectantly as Peter stumbled out. “Peter…aren’t you going to show your friend where to find them?”

Johnny stared back blankly. Why would Johnny need to show Pete— He held back from slapping himself on the forehead. Because Peter was Johnny and Johnny wasn’t supposed to know where his room was. “Oh! Right,” he said, hastily jumping to his feet. “Uh…I’ll show him the way and we’ll be right back.”

Johnny caught up with him at the bottom of the stairs and Peter seemed startled by his sudden presence.

“Have to show you where my clothes are, _Johnny_ ,” Johnny said pointedly through a fixed grin.

Peter’s eyes widened for just a split second. “Right, Peter. Get me out of this thing.”

Johnny glared at him.

Peter seemed to realize what he’d just said and turned bright red, hurrying the rest of the way up.

“We suck at this,” he said, shutting the door behind Johnny, shoulders relaxing somewhat now that they were alone and out of May’s earshot.

“I think I was doing fine. But you—You’re the worst liar I have ever seen.”

Peter peeled off his tea-drenched shirt and went towards his closet. “I don’t think you should be proud of being a great liar.”

“No, but _that_ was acting,” Johnny said, looking curiously around the room.

Peter’s matchbox apartment had been barely more than just functional. It had all his stuff for work and grad school but next to no personality besides what could be found in the clutter.  But this room, where Peter had grown up, held so much more.

There were photographs on the wall, stuck on a large cork board, mounted in frames, taped to the inside of the closet door, on the desk—everywhere.  Pieces of a life that Johnny had no idea existed. He only knew Peter as that guy with the camera, bane of Johnny’s existence, the perfect prodigy who had flirted with Dorrie Evans and mocked him by releasing the worst photo of Johnny in the history of publishing.  That had been enough to set them on a path of mutual disdain every time they had to be around each other for more than two minutes.  But Johnny was beginning to see that he had no idea what the real Parker was like at all.

Johnny paused in front of the cork board to study what was there. Pictures of a younger Peter Parker and his friends looked back at him. Peter himself wasn’t in a lot of them, since Johnny assumed he would have been assigned to photo duties, but a strip from a photo booth tucked near the top right corner of the board caught his eye.  Four pictures of Peter and a pretty blonde, making faces and laughing at the camera.

 _Oh. So that’s what it looks like,_ Johnny thought, seeing the genuine smile on Peter’s usually grave countenance. He didn’t realize he’d been transfixed by the rare sight until he noticed Peter move closer out of the corner of his eye.

“Torch?”

He blinked and looked over. “She’s pretty.”

Peter glanced at the photos and looked down. He seemed suddenly very tired. “Yeah…she was.”

Johnny’s ears picked up the hint of sadness and the deliberate past tense.  “Was?”

“She died a few years ago,” Peter said bluntly, as if getting the words out quickly would make the pain linger less but, just like spitting out a mouthful of razor blades, every syllable cut him all the same. “Anyway, what do you think? Does this shirt look like something the Human Torch would wear?”

It was a dark blue checked button-down. Somewhat faded and it definitely hung a lot less loose on Johnny’s body than most of Peter’s other clothes. An older shirt for a much younger Peter. “I guess,” he said softly, wishing he could say something — _anything_ to ease the obvious wound he had accidentally reopened.

Peter nodded, apparently satisfied.

“Parker, I didn’t mean to—”

“You didn’t know, Flamebrain. It’s fine,” he mumbled as he flung himself face-down on his creaky bed. He breathed deeply into the mattress. “What a day, huh?”

“You want to go back downstairs?”

“Gimme a minute.”

Johnny stared down at the back of his blond head. “You know your aunt probably thinks we’re taking so long because we’re making out, right?”

He expected indignation or embarrassment, but Peter surprised him by chuckling softly. “She’s always had an extremely elevated opinion of me. Didn’t think twice about setting me up with MJ because I definitely deserve someone with supermodel looks, right?”

Johnny looked at the board again. There were pictures there of Peter with MJ, too, and whatever Peter seemed to think, they had looked good together. “You’re not that bad, Parker.”

Another chuckle. “Ah, yes. The highest praise. ‘ _You’re not that bad_.’” He moved his head so he could look up at Johnny with one eye. “Johnny.”

He started at his name. “What?”

“You’re being uncharacteristically nice to me. Why are you being nice to me?”

“Because you’re not being an obnoxious jerk, for once. I’m about two seconds away from changing my stance on niceness to people named Peter Parker, though.”

Peter snorted. “Let’s go back downstairs before Aunt May _really_ gets the wrong idea.”

Johnny had no argument against that and went to the door.

“No, wait—”

The knob came right off, snapping with a horrible sound Johnny never knew steel could make.

“You’re a menace,” Peter said, surprisingly not angry but laughing in the face of Johnny’s glare.

“What is with you and your shitty doors?” Johnny yelled, exasperated.

“It’s an old house,” Peter said placatingly, smiling in spite of everything and reaching through the sudden hole in his door to knock the rest of the locking mechanisms clear. “And I used to do a lot of chemistry experiments I probably shouldn’t have been doing in my bedroom.  Things are…brittle.”  He gripped the edge of the hole and pulled, yanking the door free from its frame.

Johnny sighed. “I’ll pay for the damages.”

“It’s alright. It’s not like I spend much time in there, anyway,” Peter shrugged, still grinning. And, oh, Johnny was really beginning to hate that he couldn’t see all these expressions on Peter’s actual face.

They made their way back down the stairs to the living room where May was firmly ensconced on the sofa and watching television.

“I see you finally found a shirt,” she stated dryly, though her eyes were warm with laughter.

Peter, the unhelpful bastard, blushed to the tips of his ears. “Yeah. Luckily, we’re the same size.”

Johnny was just about to join May on the couch when what was on the screen made him pause.  “What’s going on?”

There’s a massive, raging fire consuming what looked like an apartment block on the TV screen, words scrolling along a yellow background at the bottom.

“It’s just five minutes from here,” May said. “The fire. Didn’t you hear all the trucks pass by earlier?”

Johnny glanced at Peter. Neither one of them had. For some reason, Peter’s room had seemed a whole world away.

Peter gave Johnny a meaningful look. “Hey, Aunt May? I just remembered… I need to check back at the Baxter Building. You and Peter can catch up and I’ll come back—”

“No,” Johnny said firmly, knowing what Peter really wanted to do. “I mean, I’ll go with you. Reed must want me back to finish that experiment.”

May’s eyes lit up. “Oh, Peter. Are you working with that nice Mr. Richards again? Of course—that must be how you two met again.”  She frowned.  “Now, I’m sorry I took you away from work.  If you boys could wait just a few minutes, I can wrap up all the food so you can take them home.”

“Aunt May,” Johnny interrupted, voice kind but firm. “Thank you so much for lunch, and the extra food sounds great, but we can’t carry it back right now. I’ll come by again, okay?”

May blinked. “Well…Okay, Peter.” She stepped forward and stretched on tiptoes to give him a hug. “Sooner, not later, alright?”

“Sooner,” Johnny promised, giving Peter an apologetic look as he hugged her back.

“It was really nice to meet you, Mrs. Parker,” Peter said a bit awkwardly and held out his hand.

May ignored it and gave him a hug, too. “You’re welcome to visit, anytime. And I thought I told you, you can call me Aunt May, if you want.”

After another round of hugs and goodbyes, Johnny followed Peter out to the porch and waited for the door to shut behind them.  “Your aunt is pretty amazing.”

“Yeah,” Peter said, a soft smile on his face. “She shot Spider-Man once, you know?”

Johnny choked. “She _what_?”

“It was a weird time. But, you know. She’s a badass.”  He straightened his shoulders.  “I should go.”

“The hell are you talking about? _We_ should go.”

"Johnny—”

“It’s dangerous and if you think I’m letting you go alone, you got another thing coming, pal.”

“I’m the Human Torch.  What’s a little fire—”

“You’re _not_ the Human Torch!” Johnny burst out and _God_ , why was he so upset? At that moment, Peter _was_ the Human Torch and there was no fire on earth that could ever hurt him.  Johnny was…Johnny was just an ordinary guy.

Peter seemed to be following his train of thought even without speaking.  “I’m sorry, Johnny.  I know you’d help if you could.  But you can’t so I have to do it in your place.”

Johnny groaned, digging the heel of his palm above one brow.  “I know. I _know_.  Come on.  Flame on and fly us there.”

“I don’t—”

“You’re not going to hurt me, Parker. I trust you.”

A peculiar expression crossed his familiar features. Something that looked an awful lot like guilt and shame.

“You…trust me?”

“Yeah, no need to make a big deal out of it,” Johnny said.  “Now, flame on, Parker.  It’s time to earn your keep.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm crying, the fire was supposed to happen in this same chapter, but nope. ~3000 words of them just weirding the fuck out of Aunt May.
> 
> And yes, Aunt May really did shoot Spider-Man once. She also almost married Doc Ock once. Early 616 was...a Different Place.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You are all such liars,” Johnny declared, looking around the car. “You, Steve. And _especially_ you,” he growled, pointing at Peter.
> 
> Peter still had a weird floaty look on his face, and though Johnny was familiar with how he must have been feeling, he did his best to squash any sympathy down. “Me?”

Johnny’s head was screaming in pain long before they even reached the burning building, the heat and smoke from the conflagration rolling into them from five blocks away.  There’s a part of his brain yelling at him to turn in the other direction and _run_ , some kind of instinctual fear, he assumed, brought about by the blaze. A fear he hadn’t felt since he became living flame. 

They were a block away when Peter abruptly swooped down, gently depositing Johnny in an alley before touching down himself.

“What’s the matter? The fire’s over _there_ —”

“You look like you’re going to be sick, Torch,” Peter said, voice touched with concern.

Johnny shrugged it off.  “I’m fine.  Just got this…stupid migraine.  Feels like a hundred needles stabbing into the back of my head.”

Peter’s brows snapped together.  “You shouldn’t come any closer. I know what to do. Stay here.”

“What? No—I’m getting used…to it.” Johnny breathed out the last two words, Peter having already departed, trailing flames.

 _Screw you, Parker,_ he thought, and ran out of the alley into a crowd, the kind that inevitably formed to gawk at morbid attractions like house fires and train wrecks.

A murmur had rippled through the crowd, along with the usual sounds of awe and relief, at the sight of the Human Torch circling the sky above the fire. Johnny found himself holding his breath. _That’s me. That’s what I look like._ He gave an involuntary shudder at the sight, beautiful and terrible at the same time.

Peter flew right into the building to check for any remaining tenants and he hoped Peter remembered his instructions on the way over and wouldn’t over-exert himself. It was bad enough that Johnny’s power was in itself dangerous, but Peter was also starting to display an alarming disregard for his own safety out of a desire to help everyone else.

Johnny sighed and slipped through the crowd for a closer look.  Moving in Peter’s body was oddly smooth, Johnny easily finding the path of least resistance—more like none, in fact, instinctively homing in on fleeting gaps in the throng—until he was at the very front and able to survey the scene in its entirety.

He’d been watching the hectic flow of firefighters, paramedics and Peter for a few minutes when his brain finally registered something it had been seeing for a while. One of the figures on the field was neither firefighter nor paramedic (nor a person-shaped inferno), dressed in slightly damaged jeans, shirt, and motorcycle jacket. Johnny blinked at the blond hair and strong jaw and wondered what the hell Steve Rogers was doing there.

As if sensing someone watching him, Captain America paused in the middle of turning away from a woman he had led to triage, his gaze catching on Peter’s face. His eyes, to Johnny’s surprise, registered both recognition and puzzlement.

Johnny didn’t have much time to think about that because a moment later came the cry that the building was clear.  All eyes turned to the burning figure of the Human Torch, and Johnny saw Peter hesitate.

 _You don’t have to do it,_ Johnny thought, wishing that telepathy was somehow included in his power set.  He was on the verge of giving it voice, of yelling it out, when something shifted in the wind.

Something in Johnny’s head _screamed_ and he bent forward in pain, hands to his temples and knees slightly buckled.  And then there was screaming outside of his head, too, people crying out in alarm.  Johnny glanced up, squinting through his sudden splitting headache, just in time to see all the windows on one corner of one floor explode from a backdraft, raining ash and glass while smoke and flame billowed out of the sudden opening, fanned higher by a breeze.

Peter darted forward then and Johnny steeled himself.  Peter was inexperienced, he had no idea how to control a superhuman power, and the blaze was enormous.  Anything and everything could go wrong.

But nothing did.  The fire died down, muted, seeming almost sullen as Peter drew it into himself.  Even the roaring pain in Johnny’s head began to fade, first to a dull throb, then until it was nothing more than a faint itch along the base of his skull.

When the last hint of flame disappeared, so did the pain and Johnny’s breath rushed out of him in a flood of relief.

 _Jesus. I have never been so stressed in my entire life,_ he thought, feeling like he had aged a decade.  Peter’s still-burning shape turned in his direction, and though Johnny couldn’t see his face, he knew what the figure was asking him.  Johnny pointed heavenward and Peter rose up, up and up.  There was a moment’s pause, and then a ball of fire bloomed across the sky as Peter rid himself of the excess heat.

Johnny turned away and set off toward the deserted alley Peter had dropped him in to wait.

He didn’t have to wait long before he got company.  However, it wasn’t at all the person he was expecting.

Steve Rogers himself stood just inside the alley and frowned at Johnny.  Or, rather, Steve frowned at the person who he  _thought_ was Peter Parker and what the heck, what could _Captain America_ possibly want with him?

“Peter.”

Just when Johnny thought he’d maxed out his limited daily supply of shock, he realized he had so much more of it left when it became clear that Steve Rogers _knew_ Peter’s _name_.

“Uh...hi?” Johnny greeted hesitantly, not sure if their current condition was the type of thing Peter would share with Captain America.  _Should I tell him?_

Steve’s frown deepened and he crossed his arms.  “I thought you were sick.”

“Uh…I am.  I mean…I _was_ , yesterday. And this morning. Now I’m better?” Johnny tried.

Steve relaxed slightly.  “It’s just that you were ignoring us earlier and we could have used your help with something.”

Johnny wondered who the hell was ‘ _us’_ and what kind of help a nerdy photographer could possibly provide Captain America and his friends. Then he thought Captain America was kind of a dick because it sounded less like he was concerned with Peter’s health and more upset that he hadn’t been around to help with whatever.  “Sorry?”

Steve sighed and shook his head.  “Never mind.  I understand you’re still not accustomed to working with us and it’s not like we told you to report regularly.”

Was Peter working with S.H.I.E.L.D. or something? Johnny wondered.  It _would_ explain the entire conversation and, given Peter’s intelligence, it was even probable.

“I’m surprised to see you standing by watching a fire in progress, though,” Steve was saying.  “Why?”

He gestured vaguely upward.  “I came with the Human Torch.”

Comprehension swiftly dawned on Steve’s face.  “He doesn’t know?”

Johnny froze.

 _Does Johnny know?_ Reed’s voice echoed in his head.

Johnny hated being out of the loop and he _hated_ being the last to know, because if Reed knew whatever it was and _Steve_ knew whatever it was, maybe everyone _else_ did.  _What the fuck does Johnny not know?_ he thought irritably.

Well—okay, admittedly, a lot.  But what Peter-related thing could he be missing?

…Also a lot, he realized, swallowing back a groan of frustration.

“Peter?” a voice from above called tentatively and the pair of them looked up to see Sue peering over the edge of the Fantasticar hovering above the alley.

“Susan,” Steve said politely.

“Steve,” Sue nodded back.  “Am I interrupting?”

 _Yes,_ Johnny thought a touch resentfully.  If only his sister had waited a couple more minutes, maybe he could have finally ferreted out the big secret from Steve Rogers’ own mouth.

“Not at all,” Steve said, and who knew Captain America could lie with such a straight face?  “I was just checking on this civilian who was around the fire earlier.”

“He’s Reed’s intern,” Sue explained, answering the unspoken question with her own lie.  “Peter, we saw the news and I came to fetch Johnny.” She lowered the car to street level and Johnny saw a very loopy-looking Peter slouched in the backseat.  “Would you like to come back to the Baxter Building with us?”

That wasn’t really a question, Johnny thought, glaring at her.

Sue stared back calmly, though her polite smile now had an edge to it. “Peter?”

Johnny sighed. “Yeah, yeah, _fine_ ,” he muttered and climbed in.

Sue waggled her fingers at Steve in a wave and zoomed them out of there.

“You are all such liars,” Johnny declared, looking around the car. “You, Steve. And especially _you_ ,” he growled, pointing at Peter.

Peter still had a weird floaty look on his face, and though Johnny was familiar with how he must have been feeling, he did his best to squash any sympathy down.  “Me?”

Johnny crossed his arms petulantly.  “It’s fine. No one thinks I’m trustworthy, I get it.”

“Okay, I get why _I’m_ a liar,” Sue said.  “And _I_ did it because it’s not any of his business.  But what was Steve Rogers lying about?”

Johnny sniffed.  “Why should I tell _you_?”

“Because I’m your big sister and I’m perfectly capable of making your life miserable.”

Good point.

“He knew Peter,” Johnny said grudgingly. “He knew Peter _by name_.”

Sue blinked, looking slightly taken aback, and Johnny was pleased to learn that she wasn’t in the loop either.  “I’m sure there’s a simple explanation for it.  Peter?”

Peter seemed to be having trouble focusing his eyes so he just closed them and leaned his head back.  "Um...I took his picture once."

"Try again."

He sighed. "Okay, okay! I work on a few top secret projects for Tony Stark, sometimes,” he said, and while Johnny could tell that it was, on some level, _true_ , there was still something else he wasn’t saying.

“There, Johnny. Are you happy?” Sue asked, even though she didn’t look very convinced either, studying Peter with slightly narrowed eyes.

“What could be so top secret he can’t even admit to _knowing_ you?” Johnny pressed.

Peter groaned. “Can we talk about this later?  I feel all fluttery and weird.”

Johnny grumbled and muttered but decided to leave him alone, at least for a little while.

 

+++

 

Peter’s firefighting debut replayed during the evening news which Ben, Johnny, and Peter were watching in the living room while working their way through three boxes of pizza. Sue was busy trying to give the kids a bath and Reed was still locked up in the lab.

Ben grunted when the highlights of the incident finished playing.  “That wasn’t bad, kid,” he said.  “Though like I always say—can’t be that hard if matchstick can pull it off.”

“Stow it, Ben,” Johnny snapped, just a little annoyed with the ease Peter had taken to his powers.  “I’m not in the mood.”

Ben rumbled out a laugh. “Is it because you haven’t heard from your boyfriend in days?  Gotta admit, I’m surprised he didn’t show up to that.  Big ragin’ fires are usually his thing.”

“He is _not_ my boyfriend and _shut up,_ Ben.”

“The fact y'know who I’m talkin’ about says more than I ever could, anyway.”

Johnny turned bright red.

“Boyfriend?” Peter asked. He seemed to be better now.  Just in time to join in on Ben’s favorite pastime, _of course_.

“He’s not my boyfriend, okay?”

“I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”

“Ol’ webhead, o’ course,” Ben said. “Know any other heroes Johnny’s got a crush on?”

Peter dissolved into a coughing fit, having choked on a mouthful of pizza.  “W-what?”

Johnny flung a pillow at Ben as hard as he could, for all the good that would do against a lump of rock.

To everyone’s surprise, the pillow promptly exploded, showering feathers _everywhere_.

“Hey! It’s gettin’ on the pizza!” Ben yelled.

“That’s _your_ hard head’s fault!” Johnny shot back.

“Sue’s gonna kill ya,” Ben said matter-of-factly.

“Not if I tell her it’s your fault.  Which it _obviously is_.”

“Well, _that_ isn’t but _this_ is!” Ben shouted, grabbing another pillow and preparing for retaliation.

Johnny leapt out of the way, the pillow missing him by a mile and bouncing off a wall.  “Hah!  Missed me!”

Ben picked up Johnny’s unopened can of soda and hurled it at his head.

“Hey!” Johnny frowned, dodging again.  “This is _Parker’s_ body.  If you hurt it, he’s going to cry for _weeks_.”

The owner of the body in question had backed himself into the far wall and was watching the fight with a mixture of exasperation and dismay.

“Stand still!” Ben ordered in frustration, taking off one of his fuzzy bedroom slippers and throwing it at Johnny.

“Do you think I’m _that_ stupid?”

“Yeah!” Ben retorted, picking up the _coffee table_ and giving it what he probably thought was a gentle toss in Johnny’s direction.

The now-familiar twinge on the back of his head didn’t hurt so much as it _tickled_ and, without missing a beat, without even pausing to think, Johnny caught the coffee table in one hand and flung it right back.

Ben grunted as it shattered into several pieces against his face, raining dust and splinters on top of all the feathers and completely ruining all hope of salvaging the pizza.  The entire room went suddenly still.

“I actually felt that,” Ben said, looking down at the mess.

A dozen things suddenly clicked into place. The secrecy.  Steve and Reed knowing why it was necessary. The weird thing about the _doors_ , dear God, Johnny was an _idiot_.

Johnny slowly rotated on the spot to fix his gaze on the third man in the room who was right then silently cringing and studiously avoiding looking at them.

“Well,” Johnny said, the steel beneath the bubbly tone he affected quite plain.  “Doesn’t that explain a _lot_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. The cat's out of the bag...or _is it_? *thinky face*
> 
> Was a toss-up between having Daredevil or Steve show up to let things drop, but then I decided to set the fire in Queens rather than Hell's Kitchen so Matt was a no-go.
> 
> To provide context, in this universe vaguely-resembling-canon-but-isn't, as I said in the first chapter, this takes place in the time before Civil War. More specifically, when Spider-Man/Human Torch #5 ought to be, and Peter has just joined the New Avengers.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny was staring at Peter with an expression that could only be defined as smug and Peter would have done absolutely anything to wipe it right off. Ben, meanwhile, watched them both cautiously, as if wondering which one would be the first to explode.
> 
> Peter hoped it would be himself. Being vaporized sounded more fun than what was about to happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All chapters from here on out will be from Peter's POV.
> 
> Also, since I am obsessed with symmetry, this fic will be eight chapters long.

Peter felt naked without his mask and suit.  This was mostly a strange thing to be feeling, since he’d lived twenty-odd years so far, the vast majority of which had been spent outside of uniform, and he didn’t go around thinking he’d rather be dressed in red and blue spandex with his face in a stifling mask.  Maybe it was more like he felt naked without his mask and suit in the vicinity of people like Fantastic Four, who were always operating at peak heroic potential.  Maybe it was because he wasn’t accustomed to being recognized as a super-powered individual when he was dressed as a civilian.  Maybe he was just so damn embarrassed to be exposed as plain old Peter Parker when the Four had always shown so much—

(Respect? Acceptance?)

— _kindness_ to Spider-Man.

Johnny was staring at Peter with an expression that could only be defined as _smug_ and Peter would have done absolutely anything to wipe it right off.  Ben, meanwhile, watched them both cautiously, as if wondering which one would be the first to explode.

Peter hoped it would be himself.  Being vaporized sounded more fun than what was about to happen.

Johnny crossed his arms.  “So. Accident, mutant, inhuman, or alien?”

Peter blinked, not expecting the question. “Huh?”

Johnny settled onto the sofa, pushing bits of wood and stray feathers to the floor. “Your powers.  How did you get them?”

“An…accident?” Peter said, his confusion making him sound unsure.

“So…which one are you?”

Peter couldn’t seem to stop blinking frantically at Johnny in his efforts to keep his eyes focused in front of him.  “What?”

“Please don’t tell me you’re Darkhawk.”

Peter’s lower jaw unhinged from its top half and seemed determined to stay there.  _What._

Johnny narrowed his eyes.  “Or one of those Slingers?” He looked Peter up and down.  “You have a similar build to a guy I threatened once.”

 _One of them? Try all of them,_ Peter thought almost hysterically while another voice in the back of his mind wondered what the hell was happening.

“What do you have—I’ve figured super strength?”

Peter turned to Ben for help.  Maybe he knew why Johnny wasn’t making sense.  Hadn’t he figured it out already?  Couldn’t he tell?

Ben looked at Peter’s bewildered face then at Johnny’s contemplative one and back again.  The beginnings of understanding glimmered in his eyes.

How could Johnny _still_ be missing what he should already _know_?

Johnny rolled his eyes and Peter wondered if he looked that insufferable every time he did that in his own body.  He hoped not. It was his go-to reaction.  “Look, Parker. In case I have to spell it out for you: your secret’s safe with me.  If you can trust all those other people, you can trust me. I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“You won’t?” Peter asked.

“Cross my heart. You _sure_ you’re not one of the Slingers?”

“N-no…I’m not any…anyone you’ve heard of,” Peter stammered, his heart beating erratically in his chest.  _Tell him, you coward._

“Matchstick—” Ben began and Peter swiveled to look at him, eyes wild.  Ben seemed to notice this and smirked as much as a living being made of rock could smirk.  “Don’t you have any better guesses?”

“Ugh, Ben, do you know _how_ _many_ powers live in New York City?  I can’t be bothered to remember half of them.”

Ben snorted then turned to face Peter.  “Kid, I won’t breathe a word, either. Your secret’s safe.  Watching you two like this is more entertainin’ than TV.”

Johnny scowled at him. “Wait. What’s that supposed to mean?”

Ben waved the question aside, already halfway to the elevator.  “I’ll be in my room laughing my head off, Torchie.  I don’t wanna be here when Susie sees _this_.”

Johnny looked around in dismay, finally remembering just what state the room was in.  “Oh my God.  She’s going to kill us. Is one of your powers, like, super-cleaning?”

“I have super speed,” Peter revealed.

“Yeah, but I’d still have to actually _move_ ,” Johnny complained.  “Come on, Parker.  Unless you want to explain this to Sue.  I don’t.”  His eyes glinted, the smugness returning.  “I’ve waited _all_ my life to know something _she_ doesn’t.”

“Well, no one can say you don’t dream big.”

Johnny looked at him out of the corner of his eye.  “Dude, I’m keeping your secret.  Should you really be smart-assing me?”

“Sorry.  Reflex.  Anyway, I doubt she’d miss the fact that her coffee table’s been obliterated.”

“Eh. I set things on fire all the time.  We’ll just say Ben teased the hell out of you and you spontaneously combusted.”

This was going entirely too far.  Peter should just come clean before the whole thing spiraled out of control, as all the straight-up lies in his life were prone to do.

“This is great,” Johnny said as he collected as many bits of wood as he could carry.

“Why?”

“I don’t exactly have a lot of friends our age living nearby.  Now that you don’t have to hide anything _stupid_ —” Johnny gave him a meaningful look, “—we can hang out.”

Peter’s mind which had been hurtling at the speed of light in panic for the last fifteen minutes came to a screeching halt. Johnny thought they could be _friends_.  Johnny wanted to _hang out._

_Wait, what’s Spider-Man supposed to be?  Chopped liver?_

“Not that I’m, like, lonely or anything,” Johnny hastily added.  “Or that I’m friendless.  I mean, there’s Spidey, but…well—”

Peter stared at him, mouth half-open.  Johnny was blushing.  What.  _What?_

“I hope you left me pizza!” Sue’s voice suddenly called from around a corner, well ahead of the person herself.

Johnny’s eyes grew wide and he immediately shoved several pieces of wood and the pizza boxes into Peter’s arms, sweeping the rest under the couch.  “The balcony. Up the roof. _Burn all of it,_ ” he hissed.

Peter stumbled to the balcony and flamed on as soon as the cool night wind hit him.  By the time he reached the roof, all the evidence had already been incinerated, so he decided to just sit down on the landing pad and contemplate the wonderful web of complete bullshit that he’d made of his life.

Not ten minutes later, the rooftop elevator chute opened and Johnny walked out, grinning slightly.  “We’ll have to get all the bits and feathers out from under the couch later, and I’m pretty sure Ben will try to kill us tomorrow, but your secret’s safe, just as promised.”

 _Tell. Him. Parker._ “Would Ben really wait until tomorrow?” he asked instead.

“Sue made him swear.”  Johnny stopped in front of him. “Want to come back down? We got the guest quarters ready.”

“I’m not tired.” He paused. “Well, actually, I am. But I’m too keyed up to sleep.”

“Tell me about it.  Hey, I meant to ask… Do you get this weird, tingly feeling in your head sometimes?  And by tingly, I mean anything from a faint pricking sensation to like a freight train is passing through your skull?”

“Oh. That’s my sp—my special sense,” Peter finished weakly, hating himself more with every word out of his mouth.

“ _Special_ sense? Parker, you’re a disaster. How can you make your own superpowers sound so lame?” Johnny sat down next to him.  “What does it mean, exactly?”

“Danger, generally,” Peter shrugged. “Let me guess.  It went off extra-hard during the fire.”

“Yeah… How could you even function normally in New York, man?”

“You get used to it.”

“Hopefully, I won’t have to.”  Johnny looked down at himself.  “What about the abs?  I gotta know.”

Peter stared at him blankly. “What about the _what_?”

Johnny lifted his shirt and pointed at Peter’s well-defined stomach. “These. Did you get these the normal way?”

“Uh…The basic version was part of the package deal at first but after, um, lots of exercise they got like that.” Web-swinging and back-flipping all over Manhattan did a _lot_ for the core.

“See, that’s just really unfair,” Johnny said, a hint of a pout on his lips.  “So…Aunt May doesn’t know, does she?”

“Nope.  Mary Jane does.”

Johnny looked at him closely.  “Doesn’t that get lonely, though?”

“What?”

“Few people really knowing you at all.”

Peter abruptly turned to him but Johnny was looking up at the sky.  “You get used to it.”

“Seems you’ve had to get used to a lot of crappy things.”

“Tell me about it.”  Peter stood up with a sigh, stretching his arms to the sky.  “Well, sleepy or not, I’m starting to ache all over.  I’m gonna go lie down.  You coming?”

Johnny smirked at him.  “Shouldn’t you at least buy me dinner before asking me to sleep with you?”

“I meant _downstairs_ in _general_ , not to my room with me.  Are you coming _downstairs_?”.

Johnny smirked harder.

“You know what, I don’t care what you do,” Peter said grumpily, heading for the elevator.

“Hey, Pete.”

He stopped just outside the door.  Johnny calling him by his first name was a step forward of sorts, he realized.  “Yeah, Johnny?”

“You’re really not that bad.”

“Well…Neither are you, I guess,” Peter said by way of goodnight.

Just as Peter thought, however, falling asleep was proving to be a difficult task.  He felt bad, and he knew he should feel bad.  Johnny was his friend. Technically, Johnny was _Spider-Man’s_ friend, but as Peter was Spider-Man, it still felt like a betrayal of that friendship to be lying to his face.  Not showing him who was under the mask was one thing — Johnny had known that was part of the deal from the start.  But outright not telling him the truth and making things up as Peter was just wrong, he _knew_ that.

He wished Johnny weren’t so trusting, so gullible or oblivious.  How many signs was he even overlooking just to make his mind stay far, far away from the truth?

_Maybe the truth seems so unappealing, he’d rather believe something else._

“This is ridiculous,” Peter said aloud, throwing the covers off and picking up Johnny’s uniform from the chair he’d tossed it in.  On nights like this, he usually went out swinging (and sometimes punched a thug or two dozen).  But without his spider-sense and strength, he’d probably fall to his death or wrench his arms out of their sockets.  Flying would have to do (and then the punching).

_Look at you, Parker. ‘Settling’ for just flying._

Finished changing, he went to the windows along one side of the Four’s well-appointed guest quarters and opened one of them.

The night air was bracing, but Peter didn’t feel cold, exactly.  It was an odd sensation, instinctively knowing minute differences in temperature but being unbothered by it.  Peter looked out the window, down at the street where the cars looked like toys, and climbed out.

The first few seconds of free fall were so familiar, he felt a rush of warmth that was entirely apart from Johnny’s unique physiology.  But then the ground was coming up fast and he had to flame on.

Web-slinging was infinitely better.  After that initial thrill, flying just seemed so…sedate.

Peter sighed and shot straight up, past his open window, past the top floors of the Baxter Building, past Johnny—

Johnny gaping at him like a fish but also managing a glare made all the more impressive by Peter’s naturally thick eyebrows.

Peter hesitated before hovering on top of the cement barrier surrounding the roof.  “I thought you’d be asleep by now.”

“I saw you,” Johnny said, his voice hoarse with some sort of emotion Peter can’t quite identify.  “I saw you jump. I saw you wait until almost the last second— Peter, what the hell is _wrong_ with you?  I thought I was going to have a heart attack!”

 _“_ Oh.”

“Oh? _Oh?_ Peter, you can’t do things like that!”

“It wasn’t like _that_ , Johnny. I just…” _Liked the fall._   But no, that sounded worse, actually.

“God. You made your stupid danger sense thing go off, I hate you so much.”

Peter cocked his head, letting his feet touch the roof.  Johnny was unlikely to let him go without a fight (or at least without yelling at him later).  “But you were safe up here.”

“ _No_ , because like I told you, I was about to have a heart attack,” Johnny said through gritted teeth.

“I’m sorry,” Peter said sincerely.  “But why are you even still on the roof?”

Johnny avoided Peter’s gaze and shrugged, eyes restlessly scanning the horizon.  “Just hanging out.  Normally, I’d go to the Statue of Liberty, but…”

The Statue of Liberty?  That was where Johnny and Spider-Man—

 _Oh. Oh,_ Johnny _._

“He’s probably not coming out tonight, Johnny,” Peter said carefully, more words, other words less ambiguous, balanced on the tip of his tongue.  _I’m Spider-Man.  I’m Spider-Man and I’m right here.  Come on, Peter.  Say it._

“I don’t know who you mean,” Johnny sniffed loftily. 

“Torch.”

Johnny looked right at him. “Okay. I know, okay? Spidey isn’t going to show up tonight. I just…” His voice trailed away and he shrugged.

For one nervous moment, Peter was _sure_ Johnny did know. Spider-Man wasn’t going to come swinging out from between skyscrapers because he was already standing there, on the roof of the Baxter Building, enduring Johnny’s unwavering stare.

But then Johnny looked away, covering a yawn with the back of his hand. “I think I’ll go to bed. Goodnight for real, Parker.”

 _Tell him._ “Johnny—”

“Let’s talk tomorrow, okay?  I really _am_ exhausted.”

“…Okay,” Peter said quietly, letting him leave alone via the elevator — not that he even showed signs of intending to share the ride down.  Peter instead gazed upon the city laid out before him, like a fractured gem that caught the light in way too many places. Brilliant, but full of edges.

 _Well, as long as I’m already up, anyway,_ Peter thought just before launching himself into a more controlled dive. And if the morning news talked about a surlier-than-usual Johnny Storm spending the night threatening muggers with incineration, he figured they could just chalk it up to a bad day.  Even the Fantastic Four had those, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The Slingers_ were a short-lived group of young heroes who adopted the four super identities Peter made up when Spider-Man was wanted for murder. Peter made four secret identities (2 villains and 2 heroes) and used them all at the same time because he is just That Extra.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I mean, look at you. You look less bodybuilder, more male underwear model.”
> 
> What kind of universe had Peter walked into that Johnny Fucking-Heartthrob Storm would say he looked like a model? _A male underwear model,_ his mind corrected him unhelpfully.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the eleventh-hour plot.

The next day dawned bright and sunny and Peter was determined to tell Johnny—and the rest of the team—the truth. When he got down to the kitchen in the hopes of catching them during breakfast, there was only Ben there, reading the paper while the morning news played on the TV mounted on the wall, a cup of coffee cooling on the table before him.

“Where’s everyone?” Peter asked, standing hesitantly in the doorway.

Ben glanced at him.  “Sue and Reed are already in the lab with a buncha others working on the plague thing, the kids went to the park with Alicia, and Johnny’s still passed out, probably.”

“Oh.” Peter sat down at the table, unsure what to do.

“You’re on the news,” Ben pointed out gruffly, turning a page and shaking the paper.

“What?” Peter asked.  “What could a newspaper possibly say about _me_?”

“Not here.  There.”

Peter turned to the TV and choked on air.  Old, canned footage of Spider-Man, little more than a blur, soaring between buildings played in a tiny window on-screen as the morning anchors chatted about how the vigilante hadn’t been spotted in days.  “Ben, I—”

“I thought it was obvious I figured it out yesterday. Don’t understand why the kid hasn’t yet when he’s obsessed with you,” Ben said. He peered at Peter over the edge of his paper.  “You gonna keep this up for long? It was funny yesterday, Johnny being stupid as usual, but it won’t be if it keeps goin’.”

There’s an ominous undertone in his voice that had Peter swallowing nervously.  “I’ll tell him. Later. Today.”

As if on cue, Johnny stumbled in with the worst case of bed-head Peter had ever seen on himself, shirtless and clad in a pair of—

“Are those Spider-Man pajamas?” Peter asked, voice strangled.

Johnny blinked at him, looking confused for a second. He closed his eyes briefly.  “Oh.  Right. We swapped bodies.  I thought that was some sort of horrible nightmare.”

For some reason, that stung.  “Gosh, I’m sorry.  Next time we’ll find you someone better-looking you can switch bodies with and my life can go on undisrupted.”  The words were barely out of his mouth before he winced at how awful they sounded.

"That’s not what I meant, and wow, did _you_ get up on the wrong side of the bed.”

“I woke up in the wrong bed,” Peter muttered.

Johnny yawned and joined them at the table with two mugs of coffee.  He pushed one at Peter, who regretted his outburst even more.  “What’s going on?”

“We were talking about your best bud,” Ben mumbled, nodding at the TV.

Johnny looked over.  He caught a fleeting glimpse of Spider-Man before the feed switched to a recap of yesterday’s fire and the Human Torch helping.

Ben snorted at the unfortunate timing. If he weren’t made of rock, Peter would have kicked him under the table.

Johnny sighed into his mug. “I just really want this to be over.  No offense, Pete. I think I like my powers better.”

“Believe me, I know the feeling,” Peter said dryly.  He studied Johnny’s air of exhaustion, so odd for someone who had just woken up. “What did you break?”

“I wanted to see if I could lift the couch in my room with one hand and I accidentally dropped it.”

“And it broke?” Ben asked, incredulous.

Johnny stared up at the ceiling.  “Well, when I say I accidentally dropped it, I mean I tried to throw it across the room – gently – and it hit the wall.  And the wall kinda broke?”

“How do you throw something _gently_?”

“Asked the idiot who launched a coffee table at me last night,” Johnny pointedly replied.

“Are you insane?” Peter groaned.  “That’s the sort of thing you test outdoors!”

“I didn’t think you were _that_ strong,” Johnny said defensively.  “I mean, look at you.  You look less bodybuilder, more male underwear model.”

What kind of universe had Peter walked into that Johnny Fucking-Heartthrob Storm would say he looked like a model? _A male underwear model_ , his mind corrected him unhelpfully.

Ben was having a _fit_ at the description.  Peter couldn’t tell if he was laughing or choking because he didn’t appreciate the mental image.

“It was pretty awesome, though.  The couch weighed like nothing at all.” Johnny narrowed his eyes at him. “How much can you lift, exactly?”

Spider-Man had supported buildings on his back, picked up train cars, and wielded tanks.

Peter shrugged.  “I don’t know.  Maybe a small car?”

_Find a shovel and stop digging that hole bare-handed, Parker. Maybe hit yourself in the head with it after._

Ben cleared his throat and glowered.

Peter started to wonder just how durable Johnny’s body was but then realized that while Ben probably won’t punch him right now, but he would have no such qualms once they were back in their own bodies.  “Um…Johnny.  Can we talk?”

“We _are_ talking,” Johnny said, raising his eyebrows.  “But you sound like you got something serious on your mind.”

“I—” Peter glanced at Ben, who looked just about to jump out of his rocky skin in anticipation for whatever disaster was about to follow.  “Can we talk somewhere private?  Your room?”

“No!” Johnny said at once, eyes wide.  Peter jumped at the vehemence in his voice.  “Not my room.  It—It’s a disaster.  The wall and—and everything.”

“You’re using the Spider-Man bed sheets again, aren’t you?”

“Ben, I swear—” Johnny took a deep breath and apparently came to the decision that ignoring Ben was the wiser course of action.  “Look, can it wait? I’d rather get some food in me first.”

“Well…sure,” Peter said, trying not to look at Ben.  “I just—”

“Oh.  You’re all here,” a voice suddenly came from the kitchen door.  It was Reed, looking tired and worried.  One of his arms was droopier than the other, though he seemed not to have noticed.

Johnny perked up.  “Is it working? Are we switching back to normal now?”

“Hmm…? Oh…No, Johnny.  We’ve had a, uh, small mishap on that front, although the good news is we’ve successfully created a vaccine for—”

“Yeah, yeah, interstellar plague thwarted. Congratulations,” Johnny said with a wave of his hand. “Not that I’m not happy we’re safe from turning into…whatever it was we were going to turn into with that space virus, but can you maybe elaborate what ‘small mishap’ means?”

“Well, I was running the simulations along all frequencies and varying energy output and at one point there was an unexpected reaction.”

“What does unexpected—”

“It imploded, didn’t it?” Peter said with a weary sigh.

“It exploded first and _then_ imploded.  Fortunately, it was all perfectly contained. However, this…brings me to the real bad news,” Reed said, now very apologetic.

Peter raised his eyebrows as Johnny groaned.

“The mixture of isotopes needed to power the device has been rendered inert and we need to replace it.  However, it appears that the closest suppliers of the materials have in fact been victims of theft in the past two days.”

“Let me guess…they stole the exact isotopes we need and we can’t do anything until we get them back,” Johnny said.

“What? No, of course not,” Reed scoffed.  “Well, at least, not the second part.  It’s not like they stole every single milligram available on earth. Just a…proportionate amount of each, which indicates that the combined thefts are no coincidence.  We still have to rebuild the thing, but nothing’s stopping us from doing so.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“So someone out there is trying to build the same thing?” Peter asked, latching on to the implied problem. “Well, that’s great.”

“Not the _exact_ the same thing,” Reed said.  “Or, rather, the same thing but _bigger_.”

“ _How_ big?” Peter asked warily.

“Something that can displace more than one person at a time.”

“How about an entire park?”

“I suppose—”

“Turn the TV up,” Peter told Ben sharply.

One of the anchors was delivering a news flash just that moment, her pleasant demeanor during their casual chatting about Spider-Man and the Human Torch completely replaced by a more stoic and professional visage.

 

> _—by unknown means. However, upon further investigation, it was determined that Bryant Park has not, in fact been turned into a clone of Queensbridge Park overnight, but it appears the two parks have exchanged locations.  While the reasons for this switch remain unclear, city officials are working with top scientists and other specialists in determining the cause of this anomaly and setting things right—”_

 

"Other specialists,” Johnny echoed.  “Guess that means our kind of people, right? Were you called about this, Reed?”

Reed frowned. “No, but I have been screening calls due to our other issues, and the initial inquiry was somewhat vague so I turned the city down.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have.”

“Could this be the same person responsible for _our_ situation?” asked Peter.

“Well, unsurprisingly, the Red Hornet has escaped custody, but this random mayhem doesn’t seem to fit her motives.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

Reed shrugged. “According to the initial police report, she apparently just wanted to teleport all superheroes to an alternate universe. She has a grudge.”

“Oh, is _that_ all,” Peter said sarcastically.

“But this isn’t our problem, right?” Johnny asked, looking between the two of them.  “This is just a prank, the other guys have it covered—Oh, who am I talking to,” he groaned, noticing the expressions on their faces. “Of _course_ you want to get involved.”

“They have a working device, Johnny,” Peter said. “If there are any quirks, any faults that we couldn’t reverse engineer since they’re not really required for the thing to work, theirs may be able to tell us exactly _how_ we need to get ours wrong enough—just not _too_ wrong to explode.”

Johnny blinked then started to laugh. “Are you telling me you two can’t fix us because you’re _too smart_ and you made it work better and don’t know how to make it work _worse_?”

“We could attempt to make something from scratch instead,” Reed offered, “and return you two in a slightly different way, though it will take even more time. Switching non-sentient objects, moving _matter_ , even things like inter-dimensional travel, are straightforward compared to shifting whole minds, memories, the psyche… The risk is greater.  Any damage would be much more difficult to fix.  The two methods would need to be perfectly compatible.  Now, if we had made both devices from the _start_ , it wouldn’t be an issue. All frequencies would be in perfect harmonic—”

“You’re saying we need to get back exactly the same way — or as close to it as possible — as how we got here,” Johnny interrupted, recognizing the signs of Reed’s enthusiasm about to get away from him.  “Got it. So what’s the plan?”

Reed hesitated. “Perhaps the best course of action is to go to the parks and glean as much information from the site as possible. It may be that you can find some persons of interest.”

“You mean whoever pulled the switcheroo could still be hanging out at the scene of the crime.”

Peter wrinkled his nose.  Legwork. The one thing he tried his absolute best _not_ to do – not that he was ever any good at it.

“Either them or the Red Hornet, drawn by the commotion.  Ben, will you help?”

Ben sighed and tossed aside his newspaper.  “Fine. But I’m not crossin’ a bridge for _this_.”

 

+++

 

Queensbridge Park was, predictably, full of idle bystanders.  Peter was wearing his Mets cap and sunglasses again, hiding Johnny’s face from his adoring fans, and it seemed to be working well enough.  They managed to circle the park twice without anyone noticing while they looked for clues (though what kind of clues Reed expected, Peter really had no idea).  At some point, Johnny’s hand had found its way around Peter’s arm, resting there as they walked. Peter wondered if he was even aware of it and was about to point it out when Johnny’s grip tightened, squeezing Peter in his excitement until it hurt.

“Johnny—” he whined, trying to shake him off.

Johnny looked confused for a moment before abruptly dropping his arm like a hot potato, his expression horrified.  “Sorry, I’m sorry!”

“Forget it. It doesn’t hurt that much,” Peter lied, knowing it would likely bruise. “What’s wrong?”

Johnny still looked concerned but decided to leave it alone.  He turned his body at an angle, half-facing Peter. “Okay, don’t be too obvious, but I think that’s the Red Hornet, by the trash can. Look behind me.”

Peter’s eyes flickered briefly towards the direction he indicated, spotting a young woman also wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, absently nudging a line in the ground with a sneakered toe.  The line marked the border between what had once been Bryant Park and what was left of the edge of Queensbridge.  “Should we talk to her?”

“No!” Johnny whispered, backing Peter down the path in a hurry. “Remember what Reed said. She hates suits. She’ll run if she sees the Human Torch.  _I’ll_ go. As far as she knows, I’m just an ordinary citizen.”

Peter frowned. “But—”

“She doesn’t have her gear, she can’t hurt me and you know how strong you are.” Johnny pushed him into a bench. “Now just sit there and be quiet.”

“What will you tell her?”

Johnny paused then shrugged. “I’ll tell her I saw her during the fight with the Fantastic Four and offer to listen to her troubles.”

“Yeah, that sounds like it'll work,” Peter said, his voice saying the complete opposite.

Johnny gave him a sour glance before strolling off, doing his best to look casual.

Peter watched as Johnny approached her, polite smile pasted on his face with a relaxed sort of confidence Peter was sure his body had never known. He stared, tense, waiting for the moment the Red Hornet would tell this fool intruding on her peaceful contemplation of the pavement to go away.

Except she never did.

Peter couldn’t believe his eyes when Johnny’s charm actually _worked_ , even in Peter’s body.  The Red Hornet glanced around furtively and stepped closer.  Soon, they were having a deep, whispered conversation, huddled under a tree.

 _Of course, Johnny Storm would be a more likable Peter Parker than me,_ he thought with a sigh, looking away.

After a few minutes of waiting by himself, his attention started to wander inward, to the feel of his own skin.  It was no surprise that barring that afternoon and the two times Johnny had gotten carried away with doors, he’d somewhat succeeded in controlling Peter’s strength, perhaps subconsciously, though the spider sense had likely helped him.  Johnny’s own powers required constant control and awareness.  Even at that moment, Peter could feel it—the heat deep in his bones, fire in his blood and marrow.  Johnny at rest was never really _resting_ , and if Peter hadn’t been accustomed to giving such fine-tuned attention to his own body, he would have spontaneously burst in flames at the most minor annoyance – so probably at least a hundred times since yesterday morning.

The sound of running feet brought Peter out of his thoughts and made him look up, just in time to see Johnny grab him by the front of his shirt and drag him off the bench.

"Whoa, Johnny,” Peter said, alarmed. “What’s going on?”

“The Human Torch!” the Red Hornet gasped from behind Johnny, seeing through Peter’s flimsy disguise.  “You lied!”

Johnny ignored her and hauled Peter against him. “Flame on. _Now,_ Peter! Flame on now!”

Peter obeyed, careful to keep his upper body and arms flame-free, and launched himself into the sky with Johnny.  “She’s getting away.”

“Who cares? Take me home, hurry!”

Peter glanced down, noting the frantic look on Johnny’s face.  “What did she say to you?”

“Please— Just hurry and fly me home. I’ll—I’ll explain later.”

Peter wasn’t about to argue when Johnny was clearly so distraught, so out of his mind with worry that he could barely string words into a coherent sentence.

The Baxter Building came into view much faster than Peter would have thought, as fast as he was daring to go, but Johnny’s hitched breaths and the fact that he was practically shaking in Peter’s grasp made him go even faster.

“Oh, thank God,” Johnny gasped, falling to his knees on the landing pad once they arrived.  “It’s still here.”

Peter frowned. “Johnny?”

He looked up, relief written all over his face.  “I’m sorry.  I— I was—”

“You were scared,” Peter said softly, crouching down on one knee beside him.  “For your family.”

Johnny rubbed the back of his neck a bit sheepishly.  “Yeah.”

“What did she tell you?”

He took a deep breath and collected himself.  “I got her to tell me more about the device and she said she worked on the whole thing by herself, used her own schematics, built it from scratch… But she needed help procuring some of the materials and turned to someone.”

“Who?”

“Phineas Mason.”

Peter groaned.  “The Tinkerer?  Really?”

“She said he had access to more resources and he wanted her schematics in exchange.  She refused to give them to him but thinks he might have found out where she put them anyway and stole them.”

“That’s just wonderful.”

Johnny blinked up at him.  “She said he was going on about how she wasn’t thinking big enough.  The park thing was probably just a test.”

“A test?”

“He told her she could easily take out more in one go if…if she made the beam wider and went for places where a lot of us could be found at once.”  He looked down at the concrete beneath his feet.  “I thought—”

“The Baxter Building was a target?”

Johnny nodded.  “Here or Avengers Tower, but good luck with that.  They’re probably not even home.”

They weren’t. Cap had called him earlier that morning, which Peter had ignored, so he’d left a message saying something about a trip to Houston instead.

“Where would he even put an entire skyscraper?” Peter asked.

“The moon, the middle of the Atlantic, inside a volcano… I don’t know, Peter. But he can’t— I won’t let him.”

Peter resisted the sudden urge to give Johnny, now shaking in barely contained fury, a hug.  He laid a hand on Johnny’s shoulder instead and gave it a squeeze.  “I’ll help you, Johnny.  I like the other people on your team a lot.”

Johnny glared at him, though the teasing seemed to be working, the muscles bunched under Peter’s hand growing less stiff.

“How did you get the Red Hornet to spill so much, by the way?  That was amazing,” Peter said, hoping to continue to distract him from his anger.

“I was nice. I asked her what happened that made her so angry with us.” He fixed his gaze at a point beyond Peter’s shoulder. “She has a reason. She lost family because of people like us.  It was…easy to sympathize.”

“I can’t believe you got her to pay attention to you even with just my face.”

Johnny gave him a weird look. “It’s not your _face_ that’s a problem, Peter.”

Peter wasn’t sure if Johnny was complimenting his looks or insulting his personality.  Probably both, and he couldn’t decide if he should be flattered or mad.

Johnny rubbed the back of his neck again.  “God, now my head hurts—”

The two of them froze, staring at each other in sudden realization.

“Pete—”

“Ssh.  Pay attention.  It should give you a direction, at least.”

Johnny’s brows snapped together in concentration.  “There. On my three, I think.  This is…really weird but also super useful.”

“It’s saved my skin a few times,” Peter said, shifting his gaze in the direction Johnny had indicated.  There was a glint of sunlight on metal on the roof of the building there.  Nothing unusual, given the things like antennas, water tanks, air conditioning systems, and rooftop tanners often found on top of buildings.  But Peter strained his eyes and realized that the shape that had caused it was none of the above.

“It’s _so_ much bigger than ours,” Johnny breathed.

“Might want to rephrase that, hot shot,” Peter said, silently agreeing. The ray gun in the lab could be picked up and carried as easily as a shoulder-mounted bazooka could be.  The one set up on a massive stand below them, the slight figure of the Tinkerer puttering behind it, was at least three times bigger than a cannon.

“I can pick that up and throw it, right?”

“Easily,” Peter concurred.

“Great.” Johnny grinned at him.  “Let’s go ruin his day.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone in the comments in the last chapter asked for a kiss. Listen, I'll get right to it when I get these two idiots to _shut up_ ;A;


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny’s hands were avoiding the core, digging into the metal housing surrounding it, and scooping it right out as easily as scooping up a handful of sand. His mouth was half-open in shock. “Holy shit! Dude!” He glanced at Peter. “This is awesome!”
> 
> “Y-you’re not normal!” Phineas screeched, pointing an accusing finger at Johnny.
> 
> Johnny rolled his eyes, cradling the now inert power core carefully in his hands. “Well, duh! I’m wearing a mask!”

“Johnny, I’m in the middle of mixing some highly reactive isotopes right now,” Reed’s voice came through Johnny’s phone’s speaker with just a hint of exasperation. “I can’t just drop everything.”

“Reed, are you even listening to me?  The Tinkerer is setting up a device that could transport the entire building to who-knows-where!” Johnny insisted from somewhere behind Peter.  “Peter’s looking at him _right now_.”

“And the entire building _could_ explode if I stop just now,” Reed said firmly.  “I’ll pass it on to Susan and I’ll call Ben in.  _Don’t_ do anything until your sister gets up there, promise me.”

“No!” Johnny shouted.  “We don’t have much time. Just tell Sue to hurry,” he said, and ended the call.

“We need to make a move, Torch,” Peter said when Johnny joined him, crouched by the barrier along the edge of the building.  “I think he just inserted the power core.”

“Thank goodness the kids are out,” Johnny muttered, peering over the edge. “You got a plan?”

Peter looked at him. “You’ll hate it.”

“Uh-huh. Tell me.”

“I fly you in on the far side then you sneak up behind while I distract him.  Then you rip out the power core – very _carefully_.  It’ll need finesse.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know I’m the _king_ of finesse,” Johnny objected.  “Not a fan of you being used a distraction, though.”

“Got any better ideas, then?”

“Um. How about you melt down the device while I run around the Tinkerer?”

Peter stared at him.  “So basically the same plan, but in reverse.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know how stupid that plan is?”

“It’s no more stupid than yours,” Johnny shot back.

“Look, I don’t want to completely wreck the thing, and you’re limited to movement on two axes.  It’s obvious that _I_ should be the distraction.”

Johnny groaned.  “Peter—”

“We don’t have _time_ ,” Peter said through gritted teeth.  “Shut up and just do what I say.”

To his surprise, Johnny’s mouth slammed shut mid-protest.  “Okay.  Fly us over then.”

“…Your sudden agreement is very suspicious,” Peter said, leading him away to the other side of the building, planning to circle around out of sight, using the nearby skyscrapers for cover.

“What can I say? Your take-charge attitude has won me over.  It’s not a side I’ve seen before.”

Peter stopped and studied him critically. “You need to cover your face.  _My_ face.”

Johnny blinked. “Okay.”

Once again, Peter was surprised by his immediate agreement and watched as Johnny took off his t-shirt and ripped it in two without hesitation.  He wrapped a piece around the lower half of his face, tied it securely behind his head, and raised his face for inspection.

“Good enough?” Johnny asked.

“It’ll have to do,” Peter mumbled, tugging him closer.

“I hope you’re not starting to get used to this,” Johnny said in a low voice, wrapping one arm around Peter’s neck.  Peter rolled his eyes as he launched them into the air.  Johnny _always_ picked the most inappropriate times to flirt with Spider-Man.

Then he wondered why the hell Johnny was flirting with _him_ as _Peter Parker_.

Peter was so bothered by this that he almost didn’t notice they had reached their destination until they were practically on top of the Tinkerer.  He stopped and dropped softly behind the block of concrete housing stairwell access to the rooftop.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” he whispered in Johnny’s ear.

Johnny shivered.  “Don’t _do_ that.”

Peter gave him a weird look.

“I’m ticklish, okay?”

“That’s _my_ body and I know for a fact that it’s not.”

“Ugh, we don’t have time for this.  Go out there and _distract_ him.”

Peter started to do just that but was stopped by Johnny’s hand wrapping vise-like on his wrist.

“Wait.”

Peter obeyed and looked back questioningly.  Johnny was biting his lip and looking anxious.  “What?”

“I’d tell you not to do anything stupid yourself, but I guess that’s the whole point,” Johnny sighed.  “Just be careful, okay?”

Peter nodded mutely.

“I—” Johnny halted then shook himself.  “Never mind.  We’ll talk when this is over.”

Peter nodded again and Johnny relinquished his hold.

Peter took several strides away from Johnny before flaming on as loudly and as brightly as possible.  “Hey, Phineas!” he called, hovering five feet above the concrete roof.  “How’ve you been?”

Phineas Mason jumped and spun around in a move that was surprisingly nimble for someone who spent more time hunched over a workbench _tinkering_ than moving about.  He glanced around before his eyes landed on Peter.  “You.”

“Me,” Peter said, moving closer.  “Whatcha got there?”

“None of your business, _boy_ ,” he said with a condescending sneer.

“Uh, seeing as how it’s pointed at my _house_ , I’d have to say it _is_.”

The Tinkerer tracked Peter as he continued to move in the air, keeping the older man on his toes with constant motion.  Phineas narrowed his eyes.  “You’re not going to leave me alone, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Not even to call the rest of your _fantastic_ team?” he asked, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Already on their way, bud,” Peter said. He hoped Sue was, at least.

Phineas sighed.  “Oh, well.  It was too much to hope that I’d finish this unimpeded.  Good thing I came prepared,” he said, pulling out what looked like a remote control from his pocket.

Peter stilled for the first time and eyed it warily.  “What’s that?”

The Tinkerer nudged his glasses up his nose with a knuckle and snickered nastily.  “Did you think I’d come up here without protection?” he asked, and pressed a button.

The thick metal stand supporting the device hummed, plates along the front of it retracting to reveal that while the stand itself was made of reinforced metal, it was latticed and hollow inside, the spaces within containing a lot of small objects with blinking red lights.

“What are—”

Peter never got to finish his question,as another button press released the small metal orbs out onto the rooftop.  Peter estimated about thirty, perhaps more, of the spheres, wings unsheathed and whirring, fluttering like hummingbirds.

And then they started shooting concussive energy beams at him.

Peter cursed, ducking and weaving above the roof under the unexpected barrage.  Without his spider-sense or his heightened reflexes, it would be next to impossible to keep up, he knew.  He struggled after a couple of minutes, shooting back his own blasts whenever he could.  He took down at least five, but the bots moved too fast, their formation was too scattered, and there were so many of them that he would tire out before he could blast them all.  Unless he directed an omni-directional attack within his immediate vicinity – something he was unwilling to do, given both the Tinkerer’s and Johnny’s proximity.

Just when Peter felt like he was about to drop from the sky in exhaustion, however, help came.  In the form of one Susan Storm and a well-placed force shield and an invisible shock wave that dropped half of the orbs onto the rooftop, their useless wings making horrible screeching noises as they lay broken on the concrete.  The rest continued hovering nearby, straining against an invisible barrier.

“Sue!” Peter exclaimed, relieved.

Sue looked at him sternly from where she floated in mid-air.  “Johnny, where’s the intern?”

She even had the presence of mind to remember not to refer to Peter by name and pretend it was her brother she was addressing, her tone as relaxed as if she’d just come upon him while out on a walk. Peter had never been so impressed by anyone his entire life.

“Safe,” Peter said.  With Sue around, maybe Johnny didn’t even need to come into play.  She could easily rip the device in half with a single thought.

Wishful thinking, Peter realized when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Phineas press another button.

A subtle high-pitched whine sounded from behind Peter, like the sound a million light bulbs would make if you turned them on all at once in a single room.  He and Sue whipped around just in time to see two more devices, just like the one Phineas stood beside, planted on the roofs of the buildings on either side of the Fantastic Four’s headquarters.  All three devices were powering up, their cores flaring white and hot, like beacons even in broad daylight.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” Peter shouted.

“I only really need one to work,” Phineas cackled. “But I figured, better safe than sorry, and there are so many of you, like rats. May as well make some extra in case I wear one out. But, alas, life sometimes throws you a curve ball. Better hurry. You have about two minutes.”

Sue looked at him coldly, distinctly unimpressed.  “You should have picked on the Avengers.”

“Th-they weren’t home,” Phineas stammered, put off by her calmness.

“Too bad for you. Take care of this one, Johnny.  I’ll get the rest,” she said, not waiting for a reply as she zoomed her way across the sky.

“Gotcha, sis,” a new voice said from the rooftop. Peter’s voice. Johnny, who had snuck up unnoticed in the meantime.

Phineas immediately grew panicked.  “No, you idiot!  If you touch the core—”

Johnny’s hands were avoiding the core, digging into the metal housing surrounding it, and scooping it right out as easily as scooping up a handful of sand.  His mouth was half-open in shock.  “Holy shit! Dude!” He glanced at Peter. “This is awesome!”

“Y-you’re not normal!” Phineas screeched, pointing an accusing finger at Johnny.

Johnny rolled his eyes, cradling the now inert power core carefully in his hands.  “Well, duh!  I’m wearing a mask!”  He turned to Peter, and Peter could just tell he was grinning under that makeshift mask, triumphant and proud.  Then his eyes grew round, the power core starting to fall from his slack fingers.

Several things happened all at once, and Peter would later kick himself for forgetting that Sue had only taken out _half_ the spheres, the rest merely held at bay by one of her shields.  A shield that, since she was concentrating on destroying the remaining devices, Sue could no longer maintain.

“Look out!” Johnny yelled. The power core dropped, Phineas dove to catch it, the metal orbs were freed, and the energy beams – goddamn _concussive_ energy beams – found a target.

Peter’s sight was filled with blinding white light and he struggled to stay conscious, struggled to stay flamed on, struggled to _focus_.  He could hear Johnny screaming something and the sound of rending metal – Johnny was _wrecking_ shit with his bare hands and he wished so badly that he could see.

When the world returned to him, it came in a blur.  _Focus, Peter._ Focus.

It took him a split second to realize that his eyes weren’t the problem.  No, the world was a blur because he was falling.  He was falling and he couldn’t summon up the strength to flame on and stop his own descent.  He was falling and _why did Johnny look so terrified?_

Peter had time to wonder about that last bit while he missed falling safely onto the roof by inches.

"No!” Johnny shouted, crossing twenty feet in a single bound, right hand outstretched.

Peter’s vision swam. The last thing he saw, before everything went black, was Johnny diving after him, like an idiot.  The last thing he heard was the slap of flesh against glass.  And the last things he felt were Johnny’s fingertips, catching against his own.

 

+++

 

Peter was moving when he woke up, and someone’s hand was in his hair.  He struggled weakly for a moment, feeling vaguely carsick, and opened his eyes.

He closed them again immediately, moaning at the sight of wide open sky and at the sudden lurch of the surface beneath him.  He must be in the Fantasticar, he decided.

“Ssh,” someone hushed him.  “Take it easy.”  His own voice was eerily disembodied, coming from outside of his head.

 _Oh, right. That’s Johnny._ Johnny, who was running his fingers through Peter’s hair. It felt nice.

Peter licked his lips as a shadow fell across his eyelids. “What happened? What’s going on?”

The fingers stilled and Peter made a small noise of complaint, nudging Johnny’s palm with the top of his head until they started moving again.

“You don’t remember?” Johnny asked tentatively.

“I remember being hit…I remember…falling. The rest is kind of a blur.”

“You don’t remember how you _stopped_ falling?”

“No…” Peter opened his eyes as the vehicle they were in came to a stop inside the Fantastic Four’s hangar. “How did I?”

Ben’s face came into view. “Johnny caught ya,” he said from behind the driver’s seat.

“I grabbed your hand,” Johnny said. “But Ben was already coming up below us, anyway.”

Peter sighed.  “Did we win?”

“Sue stopped all the other devices and she and Reed are collecting everything. The Tinkerer’s in custody for now,” he said with a wry twist of his mouth. “And he started telling the police everything he knew about the Red Hornet as soon as he saw them, because of _course_ , he’ll stab her in the back in addition to stealing her work.”

“Can you get up?” Ben rumbled, looking down at Peter. “I can always carry you, if you want. Princess style or piggyback. Make your choice.”

“I’d rather crawl across the floor than suffer the indignity,” Peter declared stubbornly, even though the world felt like it was expanding and contracting around him in time with the beating of his heart.

Johnny rolled his eyes and pulled him upright, ducking under one of Peter’s arms and draping it across his shoulders. His other arm wrapped around Peter’s waist. “I got him, Ben,” he said, and pushed them to their feet.

“Reed would want him in the med bay,” Ben told Johnny as the two of them staggered after him to the elevator.

“I’m okay!” Peter protested weakly.

“No, you’re not,” Johnny said at once. “I’m supporting most of your body weight. You’re like a limp noodle.”

Peter pulled away slightly so he could look Johnny in the eye while he frowned at him. “ _You’re_ a limp noodle,” he retorted automatically.

“Come on, Pete. If you were really fine, you’d do a whole lot better than _that_.”

“ _You’re_ really fine.” Wait, no. That was the wrong thing to try that on. _Shit._

Ben wheezed with barely stifled laughter all the way down. He was still laughing even after Johnny and Peter got off their floor and left him.

Peter didn’t protest when Johnny lowered him onto one of the beds in the med bay. He felt strangely adrift, as if he were floating, and some part of his mind recognized that _maybe_ probably he could _possibly_ have a concussion.

“You have a concussion,” Reed confirmed half an hour later, after a thorough examination and running all the necessary tests. “It seems fairly mild. You’re more or less coherent, anyway.”

“That’s nice,” Peter said absently.

Johnny raised an eyebrow at Reed. “ _This_ is coherent?”

“More or less, I said. Peter, what’s the zeroth law of thermodynamics?”

The look Peter gave him was tinged with disappointment. “If two systems are in equilibrium with a third, then they’re also in equilibrium with each other,” Peter answered in a sing-song voice, as if reciting from memory. “That’s baby stuff, Reed.”

Reed shrugged at Johnny as if he’d made his point. “Alright, then. Why don’t you stay here and take a nap while we work on fixing our displacement device? Thanks to the Tinkerer’s leftovers and his eagerness to share the Red Hornet’s schematics, I think we can get it up and running this afternoon.”

Peter blinked. “Oh.”

“Don’t sound too excited,” Johnny told him with only mild sarcasm as Reed retreated from the room.

Peter stared at him.

Johnny cleared his throat after several seconds of silence and Peter’s steady gaze. “I’ll let you rest.”

Peter watched him go. _Stay,_ he wanted to tell him. _Let me tell you who I am._ But Peter was still a coward and said nothing at all.

 

+++

 

“And you’re _sure_ this will work? No explosions?” Johnny asked nervously, fidgeting on the other side of the thin square slab of concrete standing between him and Peter.

“No explosions,” Reed guaranteed, rolling their much more compact version of the Tinkerer’s device to a stop in front of Johnny.

Johnny looked at Peter over the edge of the slab. “You alright, Pete? Not dizzy or anything?”

“I’m fine, Johnny. Let’s just get this over with.”

Reed couldn’t resist some last-minute lecturing, talking enthusiastically about the new ray gun (mini-cannon, really) and the preparations he had made. “…and the slab has been coated with several layers of unstable molecules to mimic the path length and particle size of Peter’s apartment roof so we can replicate the attenuation of the beam as closely as—wait, you two should switch. It passed through Johnny’s body first.”

The two of them dutifully traded places.

Johnny looked more worried now.

“Are you—”

“Johnny, if you ask me if I’m sure one more time, I’m going to scream,” Reed said matter-of-factly.

Peter caught Johnny’s eye. “Hey. What does my sp— danger sense tell you?”

Johnny cocked his head. “Nothing?”

“Then it should be fine. We’ll be back to normal and I’ll be out of your hair. I’ll live my normal boring life and you’ll go back to being fun and glamorous.”

Johnny frowned at him, looking oddly hurt.

Peter turned back and spread his arms. “Okay, Reed. We’re ready. Hit me.”

It was…a very unique sensation, Peter thought. At least he hoped it was. He didn’t relish the idea he could feel like he was a grape being squeezed out of his own skin more than once. He was suddenly glad he’d been asleep for the first time, passed out on meds after the second day of the most epic bout of flu he’d had since the spider bite.

An odd noise escaped his throat and, behind him, he heard Johnny make the same sound. Peter winced. Okay, now it was _definitely_ starting to feel unpleas—

—ant?

Peter blinked, disoriented by the fact that he was standing on the wrong side of the concrete slab.

Johnny stared at him, his fingers wandering his own face. He had blond hair again, and his blue eyes were wide and bright in his irritatingly perfect face. “It worked,” he breathed. “It _worked_.”

“Of course it did,” Reed huffed, offended. They ignored him.

Peter grinned at Johnny. “Hey. Don't let it go to your head, but _boy_ am I glad to see your face _on your face_.”

Johnny smiled back. “I…I’m glad to see your face, too. Where it belongs. It looks better on you than it did on me.”

“That doesn’t even make sense, Johnny. I guess you’re just happy it’s not on _you_ anymore.”

“I told you before, Peter. There’s nothing wrong with your face.” Johnny raised his hand, a distant look in his eyes, almost as if he wasn’t even aware of what he was doing, of his thumb tracing Peter’s cheek. “I like it.”

That concussion was worse than Peter thought. Maybe the switch had jarred his brain even further. Whatever the reason, Peter had no explanation for why Johnny was _touching his face_.

“Uh…” Reed began awkwardly, "Do you two need anything else?"

Peter opened his mouth just to say _something_ but Johnny beat him to it.

"We're good, Reed. We're fine," Johnny said, giving him a pointed look.

Reed cleared his throat. “Well— I just remembered— I need to—” He ran out of the room as though Johnny had set his pants on fire.

Johnny stepped forward once he was gone and Peter’s screams of alarm were somehow stuck inside his head. Johnny’s pretty face was far too close and Peter didn’t mind, not really. He was just convinced this was his over-excited mind conjuring hallucinations because of some cocktail of whatever chemicals were swimming around in his brain soup (because his brain _had_ to have melted) at that moment.

Johnny’s fingertips ghosted over Peter’s bottom lip. “I never noticed from looking in the mirror. Must be the flipped angle.”

Peter swallowed. “Noticed what?” They were whispering. It didn’t seem necessary to speak louder, what with Johnny right in his face.

“Your mouth. It looks really, _really_ familiar.”

“Well…you’ve seen it before. On my face,” Peter babbled nervously.

Johnny rolled his eyes and that was some kind of dirty trick because _yes_ , Johnny rolling his eyes at something Peter said was familiar territory. That was part of their normal interaction. Nothing weird going on. Just more of the same. Peter started to relax.

But then Johnny kissed him.

It wasn’t much of a kiss, just Johnny’s lips taking the place of his fingertips, brushing feather-light against Peter’s own. It only lasted two seconds. And it only made Peter’s skin feel like it was on fire.

Johnny stepped back, looking uncertain. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “I should have asked— I’m sorry. I—”

“It’s—fine,” Peter managed to squeak out. “It was—nice.”

“Nice,” Johnny echoed, uncertainty turning into incredulity.

Peter had liked it. Peter wanted more of it. He thought he should probably say those things out loud.

What came out of his mouth instead was—

“I have to go.”

Johnny’s startled expression quickly gave way to hurt and Peter knew if he gave Johnny the chance, he would make him stay. If he stayed, he would tell Johnny the truth.  And if he told Johnny the truth, that wounded look would only get worse.

So, in real Peter Parker fashion, he did the only thing that made sense.

Peter fled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one more chapter to go. I've actually finished writing everything, but I need to do another pass/ edit which I failed to do last night since I was busy crying into the new Fantastic Four #1.
> 
> Also, I could have ended this chapter in several places but someone would have hated me for ending at any of them, including the one I've chosen. Sorryyyyyyy.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m not avoiding you,” he lied.
> 
> “Spidey, you literally ran away two days ago when someone yelled ‘Hey, it’s the Human Torch!’ and left a kitten up a tree. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is twice as long as the average because:
> 
> 1) They talk. A lot. And;  
> 2) I added a little extra that I didn't want to make its own chapter because it's just there to sort of round it out.
> 
> I also made Johnny sad for a bit. I'm a terrible person and I'm sorry.  
> (I'm not.)

Peter spent the next three days scrambling to make his rent on time. That meant fighting as many weirdo super villains as he could find so he’d have something interesting for Jonah to rip into. It doubled as a sort of therapy since punching the nth idiot to rampage through New York City was shockingly cathartic.

In those three days, Peter had not been near nor had he spoken to any of the Fantastic Four. Mostly because he ran away from them the minute he saw them coming, and also because he made sure to give the Baxter Building a wide berth whenever he went out swinging.

On the fourth day, that plan abruptly stopped working.

He was out with the Avengers, taking a breather on a roof in the middle of a massive brawl.  There was a rip in the left side of his suit right along his ribs where an ugly-looking gash was, an entire strip of fabric torn out and lost.  No amount of sewing would ever fix it, and he was calculating how much it would cost to just replace his shirt _again_ when the Human Torch showed up and landed right next to him. Peter’s body twitched when his conditioned response to flee was squashed by his brain telling him to _act normal, you stupid fool._

Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw the rest of the Four jump down from the Fantasticar to help out some civilians.  He wondered if he should yell after them to point out that they forgot to take Johnny.

“Spidey,” Johnny greeted him neutrally. “What’ve we got?”

Spider-Man waved a hand at the pandemonium. “Oh, you know. Rookie sorcerer. Opened a portal by mistake. Mindless Ones thought it’d be fun to come visit. The usual.”

Johnny made a face. “Eugh. Magic.”

Peter could relate. “We’re mostly just on damage control and getting civilians out of the way until Doctor Strange gets here.”

Johnny gestured at his torso. “You’re hurt.”

"It’s nothing,” Spider-Man replied, wondering why Johnny looked so serious.  He’d seen Spider-Man hurt worse before.

“If you need it looked at after the fight, you could come back with us.”

Peter raised an eyebrow under the mask.  That was new.  “Thanks, Sparky. But the Avengers have a med bay.”

“Oh, right.  I forgot.  Man, I’m still not used to you being one of those guys, You need to tell me how that happened.”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure,” Peter said, even though he’d run off to live with Dormammu himself before ever going out with Johnny for a chat again.

Johnny’s flames flared up and he rose off the roof. “The usual place? After we wrap this up, I mean.”

“Ye—” The thought of Johnny waiting for him alone on the Statue of Liberty for hours if he lied made him feel sick. Hurting him that way would be a step too far. “We’ll see,” he said. “I might be busy.”

Johnny gave him a funny look before letting flames obscure his face. He looked at Spider-Man for a few seconds longer then flew off.

Peter let out an explosive breath, suddenly exhausted.

 

+++

 

Peter didn’t stick around for the clean-up, swinging himself away almost immediately after a portal had closed on the last of the Mindless Ones. The Avengers would give him shit for falling back on his old vigilante habits but he couldn’t care less. He just wanted to go home, nap for twenty hours straight, and continue to avoid Johnny Storm for the rest of his life.

He wasn’t far from his apartment building when something yellow-orange and fiery streaked across the sky and placed itself right in his path.

Peter nearly smashed face-first into a skyscraper to avoid collision. Instead, he only smashed into it with his arm. _Thanks for the warning, spider-sense,_ he thought resentfully. Clearly it had decided Johnny Storm wasn’t a danger, even if Peter was sure Johnny would eventually be the death of him.

The Human Torch looked at him, flames writhing around his back and all along his legs but staying clear of his face. Johnny crossed his arms and followed as Peter swung his way to the roof of the building.

“What do you want, Flamebrain?” Spider-Man asked crossly once they were both on the rooftop, his arm still smarting.

“To talk.”

“About what?”

There was Johnny looking uncertain again. “Anything. We do that sometimes, remember? Or at least, we _did_.”

“I’m busy.”

“No, you’re not.”

Peter swore under his breath.

“Come on.  I missed your stupid face,” Johnny said, the usual joking tone that usually accompanied that remark unnervingly absent.

“We saw each other just last week, Firefly.”

“Yeah. We had hotdogs on top of the Flatiron. Then you disappeared for days. _Then_ you started avoiding me. Now I get the feeling you don’t want that to happen again.”

Peter _did_ want that to happen again. The problem was, he wanted it too much and he knew it would end badly. Because Johnny couldn’t possibly want what he thought he did, if he knew what it really meant.  “I’m not avoiding you,” he lied.

“Spidey, you literally ran away two days ago when someone yelled ‘Hey, it’s the Human Torch!’ and left a kitten up a tree. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

Peter sighed and gave up. What did he have to lose? Johnny’s friendship? If he kept trying to avoid him, he’d lose that, anyway. May as well go out on his own terms.  “You know, I was doing really well. I’d almost forgotten that I had a crush on you when we were younger.”

Johnny actually looked surprised by that revelation, the idiot. As if the plethora of flirtatious fire-based nicknames Spider-Man had given him over the years hadn’t been a dead giveaway. And sure, eventually he’d gotten over it enough, felt comfortable enough, to tease the Human Torch and have Johnny tease him right back, but sometimes he felt a phantom sting every time a joke hit too close to home.

“We’re friends, right?” he asked Johnny.

“I think we are,” Johnny answered cautiously.

“Yeah. It’s nice. I don’t have a lot of those.  I was happy with that.” He took a deep breath.  _Now. Say it_ now _, Parker._  “But then you just _had_ to kiss me.”

Johnny’s eyes widened just a fraction and he drew a soft hiss of breath between his teeth. A number of emotions swiftly chased each other across his face, one shifting to another before Peter could even identify them. Finally, he seemed to settle on…satisfied?

That made no sense.

Johnny smiled faintly. _“Peter.”_

Peter froze at the sound of his name. Not only was Johnny not as surprised or confused or _angry_ as he expected, but he also came to _that_ conclusion far too quickly.

“I kissed you,” Johnny admitted, his eyes fixed on Peter’s lenses. “And I know it startled you. I crossed a line and I’m sorry. I could say it was the concussion — Reed checked me out after and he said the switch back made it worse — but that’s just an excuse.”

 _No. No, this can’t be happening,_ Peter thought indignantly. Here he was, trying to tell Johnny his big secret, and the jerk was hijacking his heartfelt moment of confession for one of his own.

Johnny looked down at his feet, oblivious to Peter’s turmoil. “The truth is, I _didn’t_ have to kiss you, Spidey. I wanted to.” He laughed a little, embarrassed. “I’d been wanting to for _years_.”

“You— You _knew_ ,” Peter breathed. Johnny’s strange fixation on his mouth that day was all at once made clear. It was the only part of Spider-Man’s face he ever saw. “When you kissed me, you _knew_. All this time, you—”

“Not _all_ this time,” Johnny said.

“W-Why didn’t you _say_ anything?” Peter cried.

Johnny’s sheepish expression changed to one of disbelief.  “Wow. _Wow._ _You_ did not just say _that_ to _me_.”

“I’ve been driving myself crazy these past four days!”

 _“Whose fault do you think is that?”_ Johnny yelled, voice climbing to a piercing crescendo. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t do this.”

Peter tried to ignore the way his heart sank and wondered why it had anywhere to sink to in the first place.  He had no business getting his hopes up. He’d made a mess of things, and this was _Johnny_.  It was destined to set the record for the fastest time from confession to rejection.

“Not here,” Johnny continued as he glanced around them, eyes resting briefly on a nearby circling traffic helicopter. “I _told_ you we should have gone to the usual place.”

Peter was confused. Why did it matter where Johnny dumped him?  “Let’s just get this over with.”

Johnny glanced pointedly at the helicopter. “Do you really want to do this with an audience?”

“What’s ‘this’ going to be, exactly?”

“Considering I can’t make up my mind whether to punch you or make out with you, it could be anything.” 

Peter’s brain stuttered but eventually started working again. “There’s an alley near my apartment.”

“Classy.”

“Shut up. That’s not— I left my civvies there, and we can’t exactly walk into my apartment like this.  Give me a couple of minutes’ head start and meet me,” he said, then shot a web at the hovering helicopter and swung off.

Peter was anxiously chewing on a knuckle when Johnny found him in the alley ten minutes later, jacket, shirt and jeans hiding his suit underneath, mask tucked safely inside his messenger bag.  “What took you so long?” he hissed when Johnny had returned to normal beside him.

“You didn’t say _which_ alley, stupid-head.”

Peter didn’t trust himself to speak and led Johnny out of the alley to his apartment building wordlessly. _Stupid-head._ God, why did Peter like this guy? Then again, why did this guy like _Peter_? At least Peter’s crush made sense. Johnny Storm was hot.

Peter had just shut the door to his apartment, grateful that he’d at least cleaned it the day before, when Johnny spoke, his voice gruff.

“Take your shirt off.”

Peter stared at him.  He was pretty sure the Mindless Ones hadn’t bonked him on the head.  “Say that again?”

Johnny blushed, realizing what his demand had sounded like. “I need to see it.  Your suit.  With your face.  I need to see them at the same time.”

Peter shrugged off his jacket, tossed it onto the back of the couch, and unbuttoned his shirt.  He felt self-conscious standing in his living room in jeans and his suit while Johnny’s eyes bored a hole through the spider emblem on his chest.

“It’s really you,” Johnny said with a hollow laugh, as though he’d been holding on to the slim chance that he wasn’t. He sat down heavily on the sofa and buried his face in his hands.  “Oh, God.”

“Johnny—”

He held up a hand.  “Before you say anything, I need you to swear you’re not going to lie to me again.  Not now.  I don’t think I could take it if you do.”

Peter nodded and said, quietly, “I swear.”

Johnny groaned into his palm.  “Ben wouldn’t _shut up_ about me being in love with you.  But I wasn’t, was I?”

“Of course, you weren’t.  Why would you be?”

Johnny paused and peered up at him from between his fingers.  “I can hear your self-loathing from here, Peter.  Stop it.”

Peter looked down at him.  “You just said—”

Johnny lowered his hands so he could give him a reproving stare. “Pete.  I like you, okay? God knows why. And sure, I find you attractive—”

Peter scoffed.

“ _Stop._   I _do_. But I basically just found out about this whole other side to you.  I _thought_ I knew Spider-Man and I just learned that I barely do.  Whatever I felt about him, I realize now that it had been shallow and stupid.  I couldn’t have been in love with him because I’d never even met the best parts of him. I never knew what else there was to him other than the suit and the extremely hot super-strength.”

Peter didn’t entirely believe him.  He sat down gingerly on the other end of the couch and mumbled, miserably, “Spider-Man _is_ the best part.”

“Jesus, you’re worse than I am,” Johnny groaned. “You don’t really think that do you?  Because I’ve seen the rest and I don’t.”

“You…you like what else there is?”

“Are you fishing for compliments?”

“Are there any?”

Johnny looked exasperated.  “Peter.  When I woke up and I saw I was you, I was so mad, you have no idea.  You know why?”

“No…”

“Because, for the longest time, I was dealing with how disgustingly perfect you were with the idea that while you may be a genius and talented and pretty girls may be all over you, at least I was hotter and I wasn’t an asshole. And I was so _wrong_ because you’ve got this killer bod and it turns out you’re freaking _Spider-Man_ and, sure, you’re still kind of an asshole sometimes, but you’re a _selfless_ asshole, and maybe I still hate you just a little.”

Peter’s brain had short-circuited at “disgustingly perfect”.  “What?”

Johnny huffed and crossed his arms.  “Saying it once was hard enough. Don’t make me say it again.”

“You…you know you’re Johnny Storm, right?” Pete asked incredulously.  “You’ve got _fangirls_. And fan _boys_!  The media loves you and your team.  You have a whole big family you get to go on adventures with. You’ve been to _space_!”

Johnny shrugged.  “I know what I got.  And I love all of it.  I just wanted what you have, too.  I wanted an Aunt May and someone like one of those beautiful girls I always saw you with who looked at you like you hung the stars. I wanted Reed to think I was smart, too. I wanted to be the sort of person who could have made a name for himself on his talent and hard work, even without super powers.”

“Johnny…” Peter began, and stopped. Neither one of them said anything for a few minutes.  Peter, because he couldn’t understand how Johnny could ever envy _him_ , and Johnny…Peter didn’t know what the hell Johnny was thinking.  Normally, the guy was transparent as glass, but now he was guarded and unsure.

“When did you figure it out?” Peter asked quietly, just to break the silence and lift the rapidly sinking mood.  “That I was Spider-Man.”

Johnny leaned back contemplatively.  “I think I suspected something the night I threw that coffee table back at Ben, because I remembered that Reed told you I have complicated feelings for _you_ , someone I barely knew.  Only… I didn’t really want to believe it, because I thought Spidey would tell me he was _Spidey_ when it came between that or outright lying to my face.  Because Spidey’s my best friend.”  He laughed a little bitterly at that.

“I’m sorry.  I should have said something—”

Johnny waved a hand.  “I didn’t know for sure until the day I kissed you, though.  Do you still not remember the last part of the fight with Phineas?”

“No.”

Johnny looked right at him and something in his eyes made Peter’s breath stick to the back of his throat.  “You fell,” he said, voice dropping both in pitch and volume.  “It was awful.”

A flash of memory.  “You—You jumped after me,” Peter said, his jaw falling open.  “You complete _moron_.”

“It was instinct,” Johnny said defensively.  “Right before that, when I was fighting those mini-bots and using your powers, I realized that I was doing things Spidey would do.  I was moving like Spidey would.  And when I saw you miss the roof, I thought my heart was going to stop.  I just… I just took a chance, and your danger sense didn’t tell me I couldn’t.”

“What happened?”

“I stuck to the building.  And then I stuck to you.  I barely managed to close my hand around yours in time, but I held on to you almost literally by my fingertips.”  Johnny looked down at his hands, eyes distant as he remembered the moment.  His face scrunched up as though he were in actual pain.  “Then Ben came by and talked me into jumping into the Fantasticar. I was too scared to let go at first, but after a while I was too scared I’d stop sticking or something gross like your skin ripping off would happen and I’d drop you.”

Peter stared at him.  “I had no idea. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I put you through that.”

Johnny laughed, his face brightening at last, and Peter was relieved.  “Spider-Man puts me through that every time we fight together.  I watch you all the time and man, the things you do, and the risks you take, they’re breathtaking – and I mean that in both the best and the worst ways. But after two days in your body, I get it. Your danger sense—”

“Spider-sense,” Peter corrected absently.

Johnny gave him a look that spoke volumes. “We have to talk about you just sticking ‘spider-’ onto everything.”

“I’m not taking advice from a guy who thinks ‘Flame on!’ sounds cool after the first time he heard himself say it.”

“Your _‘spider-sense’_ —” Peter could practically see the defiant air quotes Johnny had tacked on in his head, “—sees everything coming.”  He looked down at the tear in Peter’s suit, at the gash that had long since stopped bleeding. “Well… _almost_ everything.”

Peter glanced at himself.  “It was either take the hit or let the civilian behind me take a piece of glass to the face.”

“You couldn’t web it away or something?”

“My hands were full,” Peter said vaguely, thinking about the collapsed wall he’d been holding up at the time and the family of three scrambling out from under it.  “There were a lot of things going on.”

Johnny looked at him as if he knew what he wasn’t saying. He probably did. Johnny often did the same thing. He looked at Peter’s wound again. “We should get that cleaned up.”

Peter raised his eyebrows at the word ‘we’.  “In a minute. There’s something else I want to ask.”

“Okay…?”

“Why didn’t you say something right away?  Why didn’t you tell me you knew?”

Johnny shrugged.  “I don’t know.  For as long as I’ve known Spider-Man, it seemed like such a big deal that he should keep his secret.  I guess I wanted you to tell me on your own.  I thought… I thought it would mean more that way. That I could earn it, because you told Captain America and you told Reed, and maybe I just had to be like them.

That made Peter feel a distressing mixture of gratitude and remorse.  He should have trusted Johnny.  He should have known that if anyone deserved to know his secret, it was his best friend.  Because Johnny may be loud and impulsive and occasionally childish, but he was loyal to the bone, and when he loved, he loved _completely_ , be it his family, his friends, or his lovers.  Johnny would probably sooner die than betray someone he cared about.

Johnny almost had, he realized.  Johnny had thrown himself off a building for him, and Johnny had kept his secret. He didn’t need to become Captain America or Reed Richards, both of whom had _learned_ who Peter was without him expressly telling them, without Peter even really _wanting_ to tell them.  Johnny… Johnny was already leagues ahead of almost anyone else.

“Torch.  You know you saved my life, right?”

“I guess I did.”

“Even though jumping after me without web-shooters was _stupid as fuck_ —”

“Well, whose fault was that, huh?” Johnny asked pugnaciously. “If you’d told me, I could have been wearing them!” His eyes grew wide as he was struck by a thought. “ _I could have gone web-swinging,_ oh my God. I _hate_ you.”

“The _point_ is,” Peter interrupted, raising his voice over Johnny’s, “you saved my life.  Thank you.”

Johnny gave him a funny look. “You’d have done the same.  You _have_ done the same,” he corrected himself. “We’ve saved each other at least a dozen times already…Maybe that’s why I started liking you in the first place.”

And they were back to that.  Peter could feel his heart thrumming in his chest the same way it did when he had just leaped off a skyscraper, the world rushing to meet him.  That feeling of knowing he could catch himself at any second, but relishing the fall in the meantime.

Johnny licked his lips nervously, and Peter’s eyes tracked the movement, distracted.  “Got nothing to say to that?”

Peter couldn’t put the feeling into words. He wasn’t even sure there were _any_ words.  He thought about the earlier look on Johnny’s face, when he had thought that he wasn’t good enough, and how could Johnny ever think that?  Peter didn’t want Johnny to think that.  Peter wanted Johnny to stop thinking that immediately.

“Peter…?”

The world was spread out before him; all he had to do was take that single step.

Johnny’s face went from hopeful to resigned. He put his hands on the sofa as if to push himself off it, getting ready to leave. “You’re hurt and I’ve been babbling all this time. I should let you—”

“Don’t go,” Peter said, alarmed.

“Pete—”

Peter knew he’d say something idiotic if he tried to speak. Even with his promise, there was a fifty-fifty chance he’d make shit up out of habit. So he did the one thing he could think of, the best way to stop himself from ruining absolutely everything.  Peter kissed him. After all, if his stupid mouth was busy, he couldn’t possibly lie.

It was awful. Johnny froze, half out of the couch. at the worst angle possible, and was so surprised, he wasn’t responding at all.

Peter pulled away at once, mentally kicking himself, and wished a hole in the ground would swallow him up.

“Wow, and I thought what _I_ did in the lab was awkward,” Johnny joked half-heartedly and Peter groaned.  He sat back down properly and tugged on Peter’s shoulder until he was facing him, even though Peter insisted on looking somewhere to the right of Johnny’s face.  “Hey. How about we try that again, _both_ of us ready for it this time?”

Peter shifted his gaze to look Johnny in the face and saw his own desire mirrored there.  This time, when he leaned forward, Johnny did the same, his flawless face filled with anticipation and amusement.  And when Johnny closed his eyes, Peter followed suit.

Every night, Peter stood on top of the world and saw the city below him, like a mess of jewels in a sea of lights.  And every night he relinquished that view to feel his body, buffeted by relentless wind, suddenly, impossibly light and free.  He had thousands of memories of a thousand jumps feet-first, a thousand dives head-down, and a thousand falls arms out, back to the ground, with his eyes to the sky.

The feel of Johnny’s lips, soft, warm, and slightly chapped as they pressed against his, was all of those memories, all at once, a thousand times and more. Peter heard Johnny’s soft contented sigh against his mouth and wondered if he knew what Peter was feeling, if he felt even just a fraction of it.  Maybe Johnny did because his lips were parting readily beneath the pressure of Peter’s tongue, letting him deepen the kiss and taste his mouth.  And Johnny’s fingers were in his hair – _when did they even get there?_ – tugging on the wild, unruly mass, pushing and pulling, as if everything was just too much and not enough, all at the same time.

Johnny made a small, incoherent sound and Peter pulled back slightly, opening his eyes so he could look at his face.

“What’s wrong?” A surge of his usual self-doubt rose up in Peter’s chest. “Is it—”

“If you ask me if it’s bad, I will punch you in the face, Peter,” he breathed, his eyes hazy and unfocused, his mouth red.

He frowned. “Then what do you want, Johnny?”

Johnny groaned.  “I want a million things. I want everything.  I want you to kiss me like _that_ every day.  I want us to watch the dumbest movies we can find every night. I want you to push me onto this goddamn couch and hold me down.  I want—I _want_ …I want _you_ and I can’t believe you just made me say something so cliché.”

Peter laughed as Johnny hid his face against his shoulder, his eyelashes tickling Peter’s neck.  “You can have all of that, Johnny.”

Johnny turned his face to the side and looked up at him solemnly out of the corner of one blue eye.  “Any chance we can work on some of those things tonight?”

“We’ve already covered the kissing.  Dinner?”

“Well, I was kind of banking on the holding me down bit, but we can work up to that. Besides, we really need to get this wound dressed.  I don’t want you bleeding out on me.”

“It’s already mostly healed, but I _do_ need to get cleaned up.”

Johnny’s eyes brightened.

“What?” he asked warily.

“Well, if you’re going to be in the shower, anyway.”

“Johnny.”

“I just want to wash your back!” he said innocently.

If he had been anyone else, he might have believed it, but Peter was well aware that “innocent” and “Johnny” had been mutually exclusive for about as long as they’d known each other. “I’m sure that’s all.”

Johnny stared at him, hand to his mouth.  “Oh my God.”

“Torch.”

“Are we taking it _slow_?  Are we going to _date_?”

_“Torch.”_

“If we are, you should know I prefer chocolates to flowers.  And if we go out, promise me you’ll let me pick out your outfit.  And I don’t need fancy stuff, I just like the _effort_ , you know?  And—”

“You can have whatever you want as long as you don’t put me in debt, Johnny.” He paused.  “Well, any _more_ in debt.”

“Whatever I want? You promise?”

Peter wondered what he was getting into but internally shrugged, thought, _What the hell—_ and went for it.  “Sure.”

Johnny’s eyes glinted with mischief.  “Dinner, then.  Order from that Indian place we went to last time you helped me with the Wizard. The spiciest curry they can make.”

“Anything else?”

“Well…Just one other thing.”

Peter eyed him warily.  “What’s that?”

“You’ll find out in the morning.”

“You’re _awfully_ confident you’re staying the night,” Peter observed.

“Whatever I want,” Johnny reminded him, sing-song.

“I’m going to regret that, aren’t I?”

“Probably.” Johnny gave him a condescending pat on the cheek. “You’re going to be the smart one in this relationship, I can just _tell_.”

Forget the promise. Peter was starting to regret _everything_.

 

 

+++

 

 

**_Epilogue_ **

 

Johnny slipped out of Peter’s bed quietly early the next morning, careful not to wake the other person lying face down on the mattress, and paused to admire the muscles on Peter’s back. Peter had lost his shirt early the previous night, long before he had even made it to the shower — much to Johnny’s surprise, who felt like his whole life had been a lie because the Spider Suit was _several_ pieces and not one big skin-tight full-body glove (who the hell knew?!) and _how had Peter even hidden all the seams?_

Johnny was sure it was another Spider power but Peter insisted it wasn’t. (Johnny didn’t believe him.)

Anyway, Peter had lost his shirt, and had most likely lost his pants in the bathroom, too, except he had actually bothered to replace those with clean sweats. In hindsight, it had probably been a good thing, because Johnny had been distracted enough by Peter’s stupid lats, he’d choked on his naan _twice_.

Johnny had been so relieved when they ran out of food because he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep from pushing everything off the table and laying down on it himself.  And yeah, he’d been optimistic about his chances of getting laid, completely forgetting how _stubborn_ Spider-Man could be and _of course_ that carried over into Peter, who had insisted they talk about a few things first.  But after an hour, and then maybe two, Johnny had found he didn’t really mind.  Even though he had known Spider-Man for what felt like forever, there was still so much about the person behind the mask he wanted to know.  And sure, it had taken a lot of willpower to lie in Peter’s bed half-naked (Johnny had taken off his own shirt, just to be fair) and just talk (mostly, neither of them was a saint). But in the end, everything Johnny had learned had only made him like Peter even more.

Johnny crossed the floor as quietly as he could and slowly eased Peter’s newly-repaired closet open. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for. Not even Peter’s warped fashion sense had room for more than one vile orange shirt in the wardrobe. Johnny looked at it almost fondly in his hands. He should have jumped Peter in his old room back in Queens that day, when he first realized there was much more to him than a being that seemed designed to remind Johnny of everything he wasn’t. It would have saved them a lot of time, awkward make-outs with his own body be damned.

The shirt was clean and free of iced-tea stains. Aunt May had probably washed it, and Johnny sent out a silent thank-you and a silent apology and then set his hands on fire.

“ _Jesus Christ_ , Johnny, what the hell are you doing?”

Johnny sighed and looked up from the blaze between his hands. Peter was staring at him in alarm. He was a sleep-rumpled mess with his hair sticking up every which way and it was absolutely infuriating how much Johnny wanted to run his fingers through it. “I told myself I’d burn this shirt, and _I_ keep my promises, Peter.”

Peter’s mouth opened and closed several times but no sound came out. Finally, he flopped onto his back with a groan and started pulling a pillow over his face. “Try not to burn the building down. I can’t afford to move.”

The shirt was eventually nothing but a few flecks of ash in Johnny’s palm, which he dusted off by the open window before climbing back into bed, satisfied.

He heard Peter’s muffled sigh. “Was that the other thing you wanted?”

“Yeah,” Johnny said, perfectly content.

Peter’s arm curled around Johnny’s shoulder and pulled him close.

 _Oh._ No, wait. Now _. Now_ he was perfectly content.

Johnny snuggled against Peter’s side, nudging his own face under the pillow and joining him there. He breathed in deep. “Some day I’m setting _all_ your shirts on fire.”

Peter picked up the pillow and tossed it to the foot off the bed. “I guess I deserve being shirtless for the foreseeable future. Being a filthy fucking liar and all.”

Johnny wriggled his toes. “Wrong.” He reached down, fingers lightly skimming Peter’s hard stomach. The cut from yesterday’s fight had completely healed, leaving nothing but smooth, unmarred skin.  Johnny tried not to think about Peter having to do absolutely everything shirtless, but admittedly he didn’t try all that hard. “ _I_ deserve having you around shirtless because I’m putting up with you in the first place,” he leered.

“You have to be really strong, to deal with such hardship,” Peter said sarcastically.

“Probably.” There were worse things, Johnny was sure. “But I think I can learn to live with that.”

“Hmm.” Peter took Johnny’s hand, still idly stroking his abs and, in one swift motion, pinned it against the mattress over Johnny’s head.

Johnny gasped. Fucking _finally._ “Nice to know you remember what I said yesterday,” he breathed as Peter dipped his head towards Johnny’s collarbones.

“I made a promise, didn’t I?”

“Whatever I want?”

“ _Anything_ you want.”

Johnny moaned and arched his back, chasing the fleeting touch of his lips, the scrape of his teeth, and the press of his tongue as he worked his way down.

Peter responded by grabbing him by the hips and — _fuck_ — clearly just using the tiniest fraction of his super strength to hold Johnny down.

Yeah, Johnny thought, dazed and suddenly breathless. He could _definitely_ learn to live with _that_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *weeping* It's done and the entire work was only supposed to be 6,000 words MAX (and that's almost the length of the final chapter alone). How it got to this, I don't know, but thanks so much to everyone who read and kept up and left their comments and kudos. They were all very encouraging and it was highly entertaining to see how many ways it could be said that Peter is an idiot. (Spoiler: he is.)
> 
> Now I can go read all the Spideytorch fics I've been depriving myself of since I started this because I thought I'd reward myself after (except I think I tortured myself, too). For my next fic, Peter and Johnny will be magically enchanted to NOT TALK for THE REST OF TIME. Thank you for reading! <3

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really just procrastinating from the Peter Parker/Debra Whitman fic I want to write but no one is asking for.


End file.
